


Deliverance

by Roca



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: F/M, lots of little Hamilton nods/references, revolutionary war AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-06
Updated: 2016-07-24
Packaged: 2018-07-12 14:10:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 30,668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7108414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Roca/pseuds/Roca
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>1775. New York City. Jenny Calendar must figure out her loyalties in the midst of revolution.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Siege (1775-1776)

Boston has been under siege for ten months.

Ten months ago, Lexington and Concord brought the haughty fury of the British Empire down on the back of the entire country. Ten months ago, General Gage mustered the troops and surrounded the city. Ten months ago, Rupert packed his satchel and rode north from New York to join them.

His absence tugs at the back of her mind each day, a ticking ache that she unsuccessfully tries to muffle with logic. Officers don’t get put on the front lines, she knows, so he’s unlikely to see direct combat, and the skirmishes around the city have been relatively infrequent since Bunker Hill. Still, lives have been lost under less favorable circumstances.

His letters, when they arrive (often months late), are short and distracted, but she can still feel the affection in the way he tilts the “J” at the beginning of her name. Reading them is the only time that she can fully relax. She traces her fingers over the ink (smudged, which is so unlike him) and closes her eyes and _thinks_ of him. Sometimes it comes awfully close to a prayer. Then she straightens, and tucks the letter away in the chest in which she stores all of his correspondences, and goes back to her life.

She keeps herself busy while he is away. The neighbor lost his wife last spring in a dreadful affair that had something to do with a sickness in her brain, leaving his daughter without a maternal figure in her life. This did not suit Mr. Summers. A man of sound morals and sensibilities, loyal to the crown and to its values, he would not allow his daughter to grow up without the delicate, womanly sensibilities she was so keen to avoid. Jenny was the perfect choice for an informal governess in his eyes, and she was so lonely by that point that she was willing to do anything for some company.

The young Elizabeth Summers didn’t like the idea of a governess very much at first, but they quickly warmed to each other. Buffy (the nickname she insisted upon) was fiercely vivacious, a trait that Jenny noticed and appreciated immediately. In turn, Elizabeth quickly picked up on Jenny’s general disdain for formality and decorum, and was delighted by her wit. They often engage in verbal sparring matches, darting at each other with sarcastic barbs and muffling laughter when one strikes true. Bright as Buffy is, however, these conversations can only fill a small bit of the hole that Rupert left behind.

She gets to know the girl’s friends as the months drag on. They are a fairly ragtag pair, and she is certain that Hank Summers wouldn’t approve, but she suspects that is part of the reason that Buffy likes them. A seamstress’ daughter, Willow possesses quick hands and a shy sort of cleverness. Xander (another nickname — these children will do anything to escape propriety) is desperately poor but stubbornly resilient. He is eager, with a swift and bitter temper, but she sees the vulnerability beneath his swagger.

They occupy her well enough, but are not quite enough to block out the endlessly churning worry — and, on her worst days, the bitter knowledge that she cannot fully support her husband in this war. They had discussions (which were closer to arguments) on the subject of colonial sovereignty after the Tea Party business, but quietly abandoned the topic when his departure became imminent. He knows her sympathy for the rebelling colonists, and he knows how she disagrees with British impositions, but she prays that he knows she wants her husband to return to her more than anything else in the world. So she sits (frustrated, helpless, and frustrated at her helplessness), clutching at letters, and waits for the siege to break, one way or another.


	2. Affirmations (1776)

Rupert’s next letter arrives far later than usual, but word of the evacuation of Boston has reached her and she manages to stave off most of her worry at the delay.

Their forces have moved up to Nova Scotia, he writes, and he cannot know when he will return. It is early spring, and surely frigid so far north, but he makes no complaint of the weather. After nearly a year of skirmishes in Massachusetts, perhaps a little cold is nothing to him now.

New York inches slowly toward the promise of April, and she revels in the approaching warmth as the sun gains strength each day. It is nice not to have to fiddle with the fireplace, and instead throw open the windows and let the noises of the milling passersby fill her ears. Rupert hates the city, but she adores it — there are a thousand things to do at any given moment, and so many interesting people and with fantastic ideas flowing between them. Had she been left alone anyplace else while her husband rode off to war, she feels certain she would have died of boredom.

The fever of the new season lights upon her young charges as well. They begin to speak more excitedly and openly about subjects that would turn Mr. Summers red with fury, and Jenny often joins in. Revolutionary sentiment is not popular in this city, with its many merchants whose fortunes are tied directly to British trade. It is most common in the universities, which Buffy and Willow aren’t allowed to attend and Xander cannot afford — but they hold their own discussions, piecing together arguments and affirmations from various newspaper clippings, speeches they attend, and simple word of mouth news. Willow often brings out her well-worn copy of _Common Sense_ and reads key passages aloud, her friends nodding in fierce agreement. Willow cares more for the intellectual side of the debate, investigating the unfairness of taxation and proposing theoretical arrangements for an independent government. Buffy and Xander care less for this; they long for the more exciting aspects of revolution, and its exact justifications matter little to them.

Jenny encourages them in their interest, but also urges caution. She knows restlessness and hunger for adventure; it’s what drew her to flee the family mansion upstate and elope with a gallant British soldier a decade ago. Still, loose tongues will do them no favors, especially not in a city swarming with Loyalists. The children chafe a bit under the command, but are smart enough to understand its importance.

That understanding is put to the test as spring boils into summer and the Continental Army fills the city. It is a strategic place to set down roots, especially considering New York’s large and tactically valuable harbor, but their presence raises the whispering and excitement to new heights. The war, once safely distant in Boston, is now squatting on their doorstep.

Xander joins them. Willow cries, and Buffy watches him with a tightness in her features that is close to jealousy, but they wish him luck as he leaves for training. Jenny wants to talk him out of it, but understands the fire in his eyes well enough to simply ask that he be careful. She remembers Rupert leaving for the siege and feels the same kind of tug in her gut. He is so _young_.

Xander comes back only once that summer, catching the three of them by surprise in the middle of a history lesson (Buffy’s favorite subject, if only for the way it makes her father scowl). He quickly accepts Willow’s embrace, and then drags them from the house and halfway across the city, to the parade grounds in the heart of Manhattan. The girls halt at the sight of thousands of soldiers packed into the green, but Xander pulls them forward to the edge of the assembly. He is obviously used to navigating crowds (a skill probably taken from a childhood spent mostly in the streets), and succeeds in finding his way to a respectable view of the proceedings.

There is General Washington himself, perched atop a magnificent horse and, incredibly, taller than even the wildest gossip had led her to believe. Willow sucks in an astonished breath, and Buffy’s eyes gleam. When he speaks, it somehow carries across the expanse of men and space to reach them, and his voice (even with his ridiculous Virginian accent) is clear. She never expected him to be as wonderful as the children (and particularly Xander) always made him out to be, with their reverent voices and complete confidence in his abilities, but he commands a respect that is impossible to ignore.

Sitting here, amid soldiers that could well be firing at her husband in a few month’s time, she feels a pang of guilt. She doesn’t like to imagine the expression on Rupert’s face if he could see her right now, a rapt audience to the goddamn enemy general. But when Washington announces a certain Declaration of Independence, and when he reads it aloud for the troops and the city to hear, she cannot help but be completely swept away by how _right_ it all feels.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trust me, this isn't going to turn into some Founding Father hero worship thing. Jenny's too smart for that.


	3. Circumstances (1776)

With the Continental Army holding the city, life for Loyalists becomes decidedly more difficult.

Jenny keeps her head down, and thus usually avoids harassment. Her position as the wife of an enemy officer makes her a bit of a target, but on her own she is not seen as very threatening. Besides, it is not as if she is flaunting her Loyalist beliefs, as they are practically nonexistent. It is strange to resent an entire army except for one soldier, and to support another aside from when it is facing that him. Jenny has always believed in whatever causes she favors with passion and intensity, and she is not used to such painful indecision. She loves Rupert. This is the simplest truth she knows, and the easiest to hold on to. But there is more than one man at stake here, vitally important to her that man may be. The revolutionary cause strikes a chord within her; its ideals align so closely with her own beliefs on the innovation of society and all that humankind can achieve if given the chance. She wishes to speak out, to join in the movement and discuss its implications with anyone other than a group of near-children (as much as she loves them), but this is impossible. She cannot let her feelings be known, for fear that they will reach someone who knows her husband.

Buffy’s father, never shy to voice his support of the crown, faces intense scorn. He is encouraged (through increasingly forceful means, including a threat against his daughter that makes Jenny bristle when she learns of it) to pack up and leave the city like so many other Loyalists have done, but he staunchly refuses to do so. He clings to the rumor that winds in anxious circles throughout the city: the British are sure to come.

Jenny cannot confirm this, even with her direct link to their commanding officers. Her husband’s letters offer no details, only promises that he will look after himself and will see her soon. But that could be anywhere from weeks to another six months, and she isn’t even certain if his return will be with the rest of the British forces. She wants to see him desperately — it has been more than a year since she has last laid eyes on him, and the relief it would be to hold him in her arms, solid and alive, makes her nearly giddy to think about. But riding in with a wave of soldiers to crush their city, bringing the battle directly to their doorstep? These are not the circumstances she would wish for.

It turns out that her guess as to the nature of  _ soon _ is entirely too conservative: the day after the Declaration is read on the parade grounds, news comes of British ships landing on Staten Island. Their numbers only grow throughout July, until terrible whispers of thirty-two thousand troops in the harbor permeate the city with a deep sense of dread (and excitement, for the Loyalists anticipating their deliverance). For Jenny, the worst part of it all is the deep sense of powerlessness. She cannot fight, she cannot leave, she cannot do anything but sit tersely as the British send ships up the Hudson, cutting off supplies to the city in preparation for an attack that could occur at any moment. Buff shares her restlessness, and their lessons become little more than opportunities to share scraps of speculation about the course of the fighting to come. Willow shows up less and less often, her mother’s shop kept busy by demands for Continental uniforms and repairs. Xander does not appear at all.

The first landing occurs at Long Island at the end of August, The fighting there takes place outside the city, but the faint echo of cannon fire looms heavily in the air. When Washington pulls his troops back to Manhattan in a daring plunge through fog and moonlight, they are granted only temporary reprieve. General Howe flattens all resistance at Kip’s Bay when he lands, sending Washington’s army scattering into Harlem. They hold this position remarkably well, but it is only a matter of time before they are worn down.

When musket shot rattles the streets around her, Jenny barricades the door to Rupert’s study with one of his bookshelves and huddles beneath his desk. She is completely alone, with only thoughts muddled by terror to keep her company. She imagines Rupert out there, perhaps just down the street, standing through the gale of ammunition and heaving bayonets. He could be hurt, he could be dying, he could be dead, and not knowing is a horrible, crushing anxiety that weighs on her more heavily with every passing second. She crouches for what feels like years, staying out of sight of the windows and muttering prayers for Rupert’s safety whenever she emerges from the catatonia (born out of a strange combination of boredom and wrenching terror) than has enveloped her.

The noise tapers off slowly as the fighting shifts to the plains outside the city. Jenny doesn’t move for another few hours, not until a hurried rapping at the study door draws her back to reality. She approaches cautiously, but goes limp with relief when she peers under the door and catches sight of Buffy’s slippers. It takes some work shifting the bookcase, especially with arms and legs cramped from her awkward position under the desk and hands shaking from nerves, but she eventually succeeds. Buffy throws her arms around her immediately. Jenny works hard to keep from breaking down, but finds she has left blots of tears on the girl’s shoulder when she pulls away. Buffy only has (grudging) permission from her father to stay for a little while, so they break out the strongest tea Rupert left behind when he went off to war and try to let it soothe them. She teases Buffy about breaking her zealously self-imposed tea prohibition, while Buffy responds that she’s still following the revolutionary spirit by stealing from a British officer. Talking like this feels normal, and is perhaps more calming than the tea — which cannot help but remind her of her husband, still out at war. She imagines that Buffy is pushing away similar thoughts of Xander, and suddenly feels too sick to finish her cup.

When Buffy departs a short while later, Jenny is left feeling, if not entirely better, far less breakable. Leftover adrenaline still jumping irregularly through her, she resigns herself to a sleepless night. The idea of plundering soldiers crosses her mind, so she blows out every candle in the house and waits in the sitting room with twitchy vigilance. The heavy fire iron in her hand offers only paltry comfort.

Well past midnight, when she hears the creak of the front door, her heart flies into her mouth. She freezes as she realizes she cannot recall if she bolted the door after Buffy left, and strains in the silence to listen for any more movement. The door creaks again, then thuds shut. She is painfully aware of the foreign presence now in the entryway, though she can see nothing through the darkness. As she shifts away from the empty fireplace, her grip on the poker becomes slick with sweat. It is difficult to breathe quietly when her lungs ache to drag in panicked gasps of air.

There is definite movement from the shadows — a tall form, perhaps male. Jenny raises the poker in front of her defensively and stalks nearer, praying that she is as nearly-invisible to the intruder as he is to her. He abruptly stops moving as she closes in, and she likewise freezes. They remain that way for a breathless moment, Jenny feeling so tense that she may explode.

So she does. With a strangled yell, she swings the poker with all of her might in what she prays is the right direction. She is rewarded with a shout of pain, and then—

“Jenny?”

The poker falls to the floor with a clatter. It has been a year since she last heard that voice, but she would recognize it anywhere.

“Oh my God. Rupert?”

He responds with a grunt that is part affirmation and part pain, and she falls upon him, scrambling in the dark to help him to his feet. She is crying, harder than she can believe she is capable of, as she feels the unsteady weight of him against her shoulder. He holds her to him as soon as he is upright, murmuring reassurances into her hair, and she cannot breathe for an entirely different reason than before.

Once they’ve calmed themselves and managed the complicated task of lighting both tinder and candle wholly in the dark, Jenny is relieved to find that she hasn’t injured him too badly. He sports a nasty bruise on one shoulder, but is otherwise fine. He is healthy and whole and giving her that look, that proud and loving look that she hasn’t allowed herself to long for these past months, and she is so happy that she cannot tell (and does not care) if she is laughing or sobbing. Tomorrow, there will be time for questions and duties and repairing damage done. For tonight, this is enough for her.


	4. Terms (1776)

It is both wonderful and strange, having him back with her.

Wonderful, of course, because she can turn around anytime she likes and he is simply  _ there _ . It is something she would have taken for granted a year ago, yet now the mere sight of him is enough to have her beaming. She still worries about him, of course — they live at the edge of a warzone, and he bears his red coat like a target wherever he walks. There has been little fighting since the Continental Army secured their position in Harlem Heights, but she knows that something will have to give eventually.

This is where the strangeness comes in. Apparently, their home is at a fairly strategic position in the city: far enough from the enemy position to be assuredly safe and close enough to the British base of operations to serve as a convenient meeting spot. During Rupert’s first few days back, they rarely have the house to themselves for more than a few hours each evening. Officers of all ranks and calibre pack into their modest home, laying out maps on every available surface and arguing tersely over the dinner table. As the woman of the house, she is expected to be the gracious hostess. This has never been a strong suit of hers, and it pains Rupert to ask it of her, but they have little choice. He helps out as best he can, when he isn’t occupied with the other officers, but the brunt of the workload still falls to her.

She isn’t used to this. Her house has been empty for so long, it is unsettling to see it so crowded by strangers. She is accustomed to spending hours in silence, leaving a bit of a mess cluttered about, and cooking only for herself. Absurdly enough, this proves to be the largest challenge of them all. Her culinary abilities are minimal at best, and while that never bothered her husband overmuch, it would cost Rupert his reputation if he served his superiors the charred messes she usually manages to produce.

Desperate, she asks Buffy to assist her. The girl is repulsed by the idea of attending to the British officers, and furiously tells Jenny as much, but her father overhears a bit of the conversation and insists that she do what she can to help. Buffy is surly, but proves to be a much better cook than Jenny (though she is fiercely protective of her domain in the kitchen). This means that Jenny is left to cling to the corners and fulfill any requests made by their guests. She fetches tea and wine, directs them to the privy, and tries to keep the strain from her smiles.

Every morning as she tidies the mess left over from the previous night, she reaffirms to herself that it is all worth it to have her husband home. After all, the situation is not all that terrible. She does not bear the officers the same ill will that Buffy does; as individuals, they tend toward courteousness and even amiability. Changes in the rhythm of one’s life are always jarring at first, she knows. Soon, this too will feel normal.

That hope is shattered decisively a mere five days after Rupert’s return. They are both asleep when it begins, but the cries in the streets awaken her quickly (she has slept lightly since the battle in Harlem). It takes her a moment to shake away the dewey remnants of sleep and stumble to the window. She deciphers the word being screamed across the city at the same time the smell of smoke hits her.  _ Fire. _

The noise now pouring in from the street rouses Rupert immediately. He scrambles to pull on trousers while she darts to the study and begins gathering up as many books as she can carry. There is a bit of silver in the house, but most of the wealth that they own is bound and printed in ink. Rupert thunders down the stairs and crams a few of the larger volumes into his satchel. For an instant, she is fervently grateful that the officers bring their maps with them at the end of each evening. She cannot imagine a way that the two of them could save so many fragile parchments from the flames.

As much as it hurts to abandon the rest of their books, there is a limit to what they can carry and no way to tell how swiftly the fire is approaching. When her arms are laden to capacity, Rupert shouts at her to run and they dash into the street, still largely in their nightwear. She thanks to the powers above that that it is September and not midwinter. The street is full of other confused and terrified families. She pauses to scan for a glimpse of golden hair or Buffy’s stubborn-set profile, but Rupert urges her onward toward the city commons. The horizon glows with a red more sinister than that of an approaching sunrise, and when she glances at the skyline, she is horrified to see only a smoking ruin where the familiar spire of Trinity Church once stood.

They are panting when they at last make it to the commons, mouths dry and chalky with ash. He turns to her, and there is a determined yet pleading look in his eyes that, over the years, she has come to associate with heartbreak. He has to go, he tells her; his commanders must be assembling a firefighting force, and he may be needed. She nods numbly and watches him race off into the early morning streets made dusky with smoke. When he is out of sight, she collects the satchel he left behind and creates a little fortress for herself with all of their books. She wishes, foolishly, that stories could block out the turmoil around her.

Nobody leaves the commons until long after the sun has risen. A few soldiers arrive to tell them that the fire has been extinguished and it is safe to return to their homes, if they still remain. Jenny slings the satchel over her shoulder and trudges toward where she can only pray she will find her house and not a pile of ash. The going is harder on the way back, especially without the adrenaline that pushed her onward when they fled. She must carefully avoid stepping on any debris with her bare feet, and the added weight of the extra books makes it harder to maneuver. She is so preoccupied with not dropping any of them that she doesn’t glance up when she turns the corner of their street, and only realizes that their home is blessedly intact when she arrives on the doorstep.

She spends the morning scrubbing soot from her skin with a dampened cloth and inspecting all of their possessions to be certain that they were not robbed in the chaos. Buffy arrives at midday to check in on her (bless that girl and all that she is), and they embrace in a rattled yet relieved way that is starting to become a habit. Buffy’s home is safe, and her father is across town seeking after the condition of his shipping warehouse. Having nothing better to do, they pick up on their last lesson. Ancient Rome seems a much less interesting subject than usual, as the two of them keep glancing out the window at the newly-homeless wandering the streets. She skips over Nero for today; they have both had enough of burning cities to last them a lifetime.

Rupert returns at sunset, singed and exhausted. She immediately senses a grimness about him, but her questions yield fairly harmless answers. Assigned a small squad of soldiers, he led them to one of the more run-down sections of the city to combat the flames. When he recalls a small tailor shop that he managed to rescue, Buffy interrupts to inquire the name of the business. When Rupert (who himself has grown somewhat fond of Jenny’s endearingly irreverent pupil) tells her, she sighs in relief.

“That’s Willow’s place,” she tells them. “Did you see a girl with red hair? Was she alright?”

Her husband replies in the affirmative, and Jenny gives his hand a thankful squeeze.

Buffy departs shortly afterward, called home by a father furious to have found half of the stores in his warehouse stolen and the rest burned beyond repair. Hank Summers mutters about the  _ damn arsonist rebels _ as he escorts his daughter home. 

“Do they have proof?” she asks Rupert once they’ve gone. “Was it revolutionaries?”

“No,” he says shortly. “They don’t have any solid evidence. Not yet.”

“What does that mean?” Her tone is challenging, she knows, but she cannot help herself. “If there’s no proof, then you can’t say-”

“We’ve made an arrest,” he says heavily. “Travers apprehended a Continental spy near Flushing Bay. They’re hoping to get information from him about the source of the fire before they… before tomorrow.” The dread in his voice is obvious, and she feels her irritation dimming into something more foreboding.

“What’s going on?”

“I don’t like this,” he murmurs, almost to himself. “It seems far too harsh. He’s so very young.”

“Who?”

“Liam Hale. A boy of twenty-one, on a mission for General Washington. At least, he was.”

“What are they going to do to him?” She knows, of course, but she wants to hear him confirm it. He avoids her gaze, staring resolutely at the floor. “Rupert.”

“He’ll be hanged tomorrow morning.”

As a witness to Hale’s capture, Rupert is obliged to be present at the execution. He stands beside Travers, a figure of great importance in the British forces and her husband’s direct superior. She has always hated the man, with his arrogance and severity, and her loathing only increases when she sees the gleam in his eye as the young spy is led to the hanging tree. Rupert did not want her there, of course, but she insisted on coming along. It is a morbid instinct, perhaps, but one that she cannot shake. 

This is not Rupert’s fault, not directly. But this boy will die here today at the hands of the army her husband serves. She has no illusions about painting the British as heinous monsters for this act; she does not doubt that the revolutionaries would do the same, if they had found a British spy in their midst. Nevertheless, it is something she must learn to accept: this is what her husband  _ does _ . This is a small taste of his daily life in battle and at siege — something she has never been able to experience, never been able to understand (until perhaps those hours crouched under the desk, hiding from the gunfire roaring in the streets). This is a step toward coming to terms with what their life together will be in the midst of war.

So she stands near the front of the crowd, one of the only women present, and watches as the noose is lowered and tightened. The young man is remarkably calm. There is something angelic in his face, his handsome features arranged to reflect the serenity of the damned. He gives a speech before he ascends the ladder, something short and touching about giving his life for his country. As he turns, his eyes lock onto hers — only for the briefest of moments, but the intensity in his gaze is such that she is shaken where she stands. She cannot tear her eyes away as he climbs, as he directs one last measured glance heavenward, as he falls.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I couldn't handle calling him "Angel" within the context of this fic, so that guy went by his pre-vamp name of "Liam" in this chapter. (Buffy is a different matter because, come on, it's Buffy.) Since the Buffyverse canon never deigned to give him a last name, I just gave Angel the one that belonged to the historical figure he's replacing, Nathan Hale. As for the dialogue, I'm not really striving to make it particularly era-accurate. Call it the Hamilton effect, or else say it's they'd-sound-ridiculous-if-I-tried-that-and-honestly-it-wouldn't-be-worth-it condition. In either case, that's what I'm rolling with.


	5. Pattern (1776-1777)

The year that follows is one of the strangest and tensest of her life.

In October, the bulk of the Continental Army at last withdraws from the city. At first, this development both relieves and terrifies her. The city will be safer without the two armies standing toe to toe within its limits, but their departure might mean that Rupert will leave with the British forces to chase them north. This does not turn out to be the case, at least not immediately: the British intend to make New York City their base of operations within the colonies, and thus need an able-bodied force to keep the area secure. After Howe hands the revolutionaries a sound defeat at White Plains, his troops return to the city to stamp out the last pockets of rebellion.

This buys her a month with her husband, a month in which he comes home nearly every night, a month that she manages to cherish desperately, even as she catches the scent of gunpowder on his skin every time they touch.

Such intimate moments are few and far between, though neither of them wishes it to be so. Strangers now occupy their house both day and night — almost a quarter of the city burned away during the fire, and housing for the occupying army was scarce to begin with. Civilians across the city are ordered to accommodate soldiers, so she supposes they are lucky to be doing so more or less as volunteers. Anywhere from two to half a dozen men reside with them at any given time, the number shifting as they are called out to various campaigns. She dreads the moment that Rupert will join them, and it comes all too soon: when Fort Washington falls, bringing with it the last Continental forces left in the city, Rupert rides out to Newport in a matter of days.

It is a cycle that will repeat throughout the year. He will go off to war for several weeks, then be called back to the city and into her arms for another month before departing again. There is a slight change that begins to occur within this pattern, however: slowly but surely, he begins to spend less time on the field and more time in New York; less time dodging musket fire and more time poring over maps and arguing tactics within the safety of their home. It is a development she greatly appreciates. Though Rupert is a fine commander on the battlefield — amazingly enough, his incredible intelligence is rarely impacted by the chaos and violence around him — he excels at the long-term planning used to engineer major campaigns. Though his suggestions are not regarded as highly as those of his superiors (despite the fact that, in retrospect, his plans often prove to be better than those they concoct), Jenny is pleased that he is allowed to play to his greatest strengths. The fact that this largely keeps him off the battlefield is even better.

Nevertheless, there are still those times that he is called away to fight. The house isn’t empty without him, not with all of their guests, but their presence does little to comfort her. The best of them are polite but distant, eating the meals that Buffy helps her prepare and making occasional awkward small talk. And the worst —well, there is only one of them that can qualify.

William Pratt is charming, though a bit cocky for Jenny’s tastes. He’s even handsome enough that Buffy, despite her intense animosity for the officers she has to serve, comments upon his looks. He is, in all respects, a debonair gentleman. But she doesn’t trust him. There is a strange gleam in his eye that she catches sometimes, one that contains a hint of something darker than amused superiority. The fact that he will not reveal his rank or anything about what he does only compounds this. To her dismay, even Rupert doesn’t know — can’t know, in fact, as he has been told that nearly everything about this man is very much a secret.

Their unwelcome guest doesn’t seem to mind the extra wariness this causes her. Indeed, he seems to somewhat enjoy this effect. She hates to admit that it bothers her. Unlike the other soldiers that stay with them, his business seems to require that he stay in the city at all times. This means he is in her home every night, even when her husband is gone. She doesn’t sleep easily during these times, and jumps slightly whenever she enters a room and finds William (he insists upon going by his first name, a breach of etiquette that reminds her, twistedly, of Buffy) there.

Rupert comes home for Christmas, thank God. It is strange to celebrate it with strangers alongside them, and worse than strange to do so with William, but the holiday is wonderful nevertheless. The men boarding with them lose a bit of the pinched, heavy look that haunts their faces when they gather around the fire, and they prove to be decent singers when it comes time to sing carols and hymns. Of course, they are not as fine as her husband. Rupert has no luck in finding a suitable turkey or ham for Christmas dinner (food is growing scarcer and scarcer in the occupied city), but he does manage to procure some holly and mistletoe for decoration. When they retire that evening, she feels softer and calmer than she has in longer than she can remember.

Then, inexplicably, she is stuck by the thought of Xander. Where is he now? Out in the cold, most likely. Squatting in the snow with his fellow soldiers, scraping to put together a fire or do something to save themselves from frostbite. The image will not leave her mind. She pulls closer to her husband, curls as tightly as she can to his side, but the strange chill that has settled over her remains well into the early hours of the morning.

A days later, when new of Trenton reaches the city, she imagines another way the night may have gone: Xander, poling his raft across the Delaware in a secretive and triumphant charge across its frigid waters. The thought cheers her, despite the way Rupert’s brow furrows when he learns of the thousand Hessians captured by Washington.

Again, she is struck by the absurdity of her position. She knows that, were she to enlist, it would not necessarily be on the same side as her husband. The thought is an uncomfortable one, but she tries to push it away with the knowledge that she cannot fight in any case, so it is pointless to consider hypotheticals. Somehow, the fact that she is more or less powerless to pick a side fails to bring her comfort.

The spring carries with it a lull in the fighting, but the war roars back to life in the summer and continues at a fast clip into the fall. Much to the chagrin of the British, the Continental Army wins scattered but significant victories at Oriskany, Bennington, Fort Stanwix, and Saratoga. The loss of men and supplies is a blow to British resources, but the inspiration these victories lend to the revolutionaries is even more tactically disadvantageous. It is known by all that their soldiers are paid irregularly, and the sums they earn are paltry at best; they are driven to fight almost entirely by their own determination for a free country. As such resolution varies significantly with the men’s spirits, the encouragement that goes hand in hand with such victories is ill news for the British.

Though the British still win most battles and maintain far superior numbers and firepower, the atmosphere in Jenny’s household dims after each loss. The day that news of Saratoga reaches them is particularly bleak. Rupert spends the day locked in the study with his superiors, checking and rechecking their maps and figures until she is certain their brains must be pouring out their ears. Even after he emerges, he paces restlessly and mutters under his breath about reputation, ruination, and the French.

She escapes the house under the pretense of giving Buffy a lesson. Neither of them is particularly in the mood to study, so instead they visit Willow at her mother’s shop. Upon meeting Willow’s mother for the first time, Jenny finds that Sheila Rosenberg has her daughter’s intelligence and red hair, but none of her warmth. Willow tells her that she considered moving to Pennsylvania with the rest of their congregation after the British took control of the city, but (much to Buffy’s relief) decided to stay. The city now holds very few Jewish residents — barely enough to hold services together — but those that remain still tend to favor the revolution. Willow’s family is no exception, and their business has suffered somewhat for it. The store is completely empty of customers when they arrive, so Willow is allowed to chat with them as she sews.

It is amazing how their view of current events differs from Rupert’s pervasive gloom and frustration. When the subject turns Saratoga, their voices are alight with pride and excitement. They don’t speak of lost soldiers or dwindling supplies. They speak of victory. Rupert would scoff at their blind optimism, and she even feels a twinge of pity for them and their simple confidence — but she also feels fondness. Optimism, as the rebels have proved, can be a valuable ally.

It is also telling that they do not bother to hide their conversation from her (aside from one instance in which they duck into the storeroom for a private chat, though she can hardly blame them for wanting a bit of time by themselves). In the past, she facilitated many a discussion with Buffy and her friends about the merits of revolutionary ideals. She hasn’t spoken with them on the topic very much of late, what with Rupert being home and her barely having occasion to see Willow anymore, but it is clear that they still see her as one of them: a revolutionary woman, waiting at the edge of war with hope for a free America. Jenny only wishes she herself was so certain of her priorities. In a simpler world, one without duty or family, that is almost certainly how she would stand.

But theirs is not a simple world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun facts about this chapter:  
> 1\. I had to do research on Colonial Christmas traditions for this chapter. It turns out that pretty much everything about Christmas as we know it comes from the 1800s. Gift-giving between adults wasn't actually A Thing back then, sadly.  
> 2\. I just about shit my pants when I learned that Spike's last name is canonically Pratt. That is all.


	6. Coexistence (1777-1778)

The next winter is a brutal one.

Rumors of the conditions at Valley Forge trickle through the city, and the smirk on William’s face when he recounts them for her makes Jenny want to strike him. She wonders if Xander is there, and if he has shoes to wear or even a scrap of blanket to fend off the cold. 

This year, there are no carols sung at Christmas; no holly or mistletoe placed on the mantel. Rupert and several of his superiors spend the the day in the study with the door locked tightly behind them. Even Travers makes an unpleasant appearance, and she is less than surprised when she catches him in deep conversation with William. Like attracts like, she supposes. The food shortages are even worse this year, so they make do with a passably edible mussel soup that Jenny is forced to concoct by herself. Buffy is absent as the chef, having taken the evening off to be with her father. Jenny can only hope that her Christmas is more pleasant.

Thankfully, Buffy has become slowly less reluctant to help with the cooking over the past year. Jenny thinks that it may have something to do with William’s presence, though the thought unsettles her so much that she prefers to believe that Buffy is just happy to get out of her father’s house. Hank Summers has been more overbearing than ever of late, insinuating that Buffy is not developing into the fine young lady that she should be. He does not blame Jenny for this (a small mercy), but instead takes issue with Buffy’s headstrong nature. She is, of course, even more bright and stubborn than when Jenny first met her — God, can that have been three years ago? — but his daughter is the finest woman Jenny knows, and her rebellious streak is a lively and integral part of that. She tries to impress this upon Mr. Summers, and is somewhat irritated when he takes no heed. Jenny has come to rely on Buffy’s friendship more than she could ever have believed possible, and finds the holidays to be quite miserable without her.

However, the gloom of Christmas is nothing compared with the cold fury and desperation that strikes in February, when the French sign their treaty with the rebels and are pulled into the war. Such a move is not unexpected, but is nevertheless very ill news for the British. Aside from the reinforcements and supplies this pact will no doubt lend to the Continental army, it also means that the previously-untouchable British navy will now face resistance from the French fleet. 

Having forced Rupert to bed early in the evening, compelled to do  _ something _ to lessen the dark circles beneath his eyes, is is Jenny that receives the messenger that brings news of the alliance. She is initially impressed that her husband is important enough to merit a personal messenger, but then realizes it now falls to her to tell him what has happened. He looks so very peaceful in sleep, more so than he ever does when awake nowadays, and it hurts her heart to see exhaustion, dread, and outrage settle upon his features a moment later when she awakens and informs him.

When spring begins to thaw the city, the atmosphere within their house remains frigid. Rupert barely has time to speak to her anymore, not with his constant meetings that grow longer and more secretive by the day. Even at night, when they are lying together in bed, he seems miles away. His kisses are rare and distracted; his touches absentminded. There are still a few times when he looks at her with all of his old warmth, when his hand brushes hers and she recalls why it is all worth it. But these instances are now rare in a house haunted by the war that lurks outside the city.

Her husband is called away to fight again in early June, when Washington’s army has managed to pick itself out of the mud of Valley Forge and engage with the British troops marching from Philadelphia. Rupert rides out from New York with a small group of reinforcements, hoping to keep the rebels from hindering their progress any more than they already have. The weather is scorchingly hot in the city, and she hates to imagine how unpleasant it must be for Rupert, riding hard on the open roads while the sun beats down with a vengeance.

The Philadelphia force returns to New York within a few weeks, much to her relief. The officers staying with her leave for some sort of briefing when they hear of their arrival, and she fully expects Rupert to be with them when they return.

During his absence, she has thought about the state of affairs between them, the emptiness and the distance that shape their interactions when he is home. The war has taken its toll on both of them: the demands of battle and his superiors have hollowed him into a duty-worn shell, while her own quiet guilt as an ideological traitor weighs on her every day. That will change now, she decides. She is still torn, she still has loyalties that are not entirely compatible with his, but she will not let that define the way she treats him. She loves him, and she loves her country’s efforts toward liberty. Neither of these truths is likely to change, and so she shall simply have to stop moping and find a way for them to coexist.

She plans out their reunion while she waits for him to return. He will walk through the front door. She will give him her softest, more heartfelt smile — the one he tells her is the only thing that can chase the spectres of the battlefield from his mind. She will go to his side and grasp his arm. And then, their houseguests be damned, she will kiss him.

Instead, she screams. William half-carries him inside, supporting him by one arm while another soldier grasps at the other. Rupert’s head is lolling, he is barely conscious, the red dye from his jacket is somehow staining his undershirt —  _ no _ , that’s blood, God, she can’t move, can’t do anything but stare. Then William heaves him onto the table. Rupert’s eyes screw tighter and a soft, involuntary cry escapes him, and suddenly Jenny is at his side. He’s alive, she now knows. He’s alive. For a few horrible moments, when they first stepped through the door, she believed they were carrying a corpse. Jenny desperately grabs his hand. It is impossibly hot to the touch. His face is still taught with pain, but he does not make a sound. She tries to watch his chest for the rise and fall of his breathing, but her eyes always stray to the great bloody smear across his left side.

The story emerges in garbled chunks that she is too dazed to process entirely. Monmouth. Everywhere, people dying from musket fire or bayonets or the crushing heat. The Continental forces routed. Rupert’s horse shot out from under him during while in pursuit. Another shot catching him in the side.

“We got a doctor to look at him after the fighting,” the soldier at her elbow says nervously. “He says it went through cleanly, and he stitched it up.” He gives her a weak smile, one that does little to convince her of his certainty. “There’s nothing else to be done, but he should recover.”

One by one, they leave her. William nods at her as he retreats to his quarters, his usual smug grin notably absent. At last, she is alone in the kitchen with her husband. The house is strangely still and quiet. She sits there, listening his every breath, and thinks. She wonders if he will ever wake up. She wonders if the wound is infected, if it is worse than the doctor thought, if he will die right here on this table and she will never get to see him smile again. She wonders, bizarrely, which soldier fired at him. She wonders if that man was thinking of freedom and liberty when he aimed at the man she loved and pulled the trigger.

This should make her angry, should make her bitter and remorseful. Instead, she simply feels tired. She fetches the pillow and blanket from their room, arranges them around her husband so that the hard wood of the table is less uncomfortable, and falls asleep in her chair with his hand still clasped in hers.

It takes months for him to heal. Slowly, he learns again to sit up, to stand for a few shaky moments, and finally to walk. Jenny is at his side through it all. This is not the way she would have wished for them to become close once again, but this effect of his injuries is certainly not an unwelcome one. Nearly every moment of her day is spent at his side, giving either care or companionship. They still have their boarders, and meetings in the study resume once he is well enough to stand, but somehow, in the times they are alone, they feel more  _ together _ than ever before.

One evening, as they are reading together in their bed, they get to talking about what their lives have become. It is slow going, the conversation punctuated by awkward pauses and careful yet distressed confessions. They agree on many things: they are weary of the fighting, they are sick of all the needless death, they are scared for each other’s lives. Rupert talks a bit about how, even in the thick of battle, he worries about her. He trusts in her capabilities, of course; knowing her for as long as he has, he would be a fool not to. But there is danger in the city, as they both acknowledge. When he is gone, anything could happen. Another fire. Another battle in the streets. His worry on her behalf is something she has never considered at length, and she finds herself both slightly exasperated and touched.

In the end, they get around to ideals. She doesn’t tell him everything. She loves him, and she trusts him, but something in her knows how much it would hurt him to know that she is not on his side in this endeavor he has risked his life for so many times. Instead, she poses a few theoretical questions about the justifiability of the revolution and the goals of its proponents. He answers thoughtfully, considering each point. To her surprise, he agrees with much of what she puts forward. The rebels have a right to complain, he says, but they are simply going about it the wrong way. As for their new nation, and all of the ideas they have proposed, he is truly amazed. Her heart leaps to hear it, and she leans in eagerly despite her attempts to maintain a neutral appearance.

Rupert is a scholar. He has studied history and the classics; he knows of Athenian democracy, Hobbes and Locke, and every other philosophy that the revolutionaries invoke when describing what their world will be. Truly, he admires their ideals. But this is as far as it goes. The sense of practicality he has always possessed (and has perhaps been honed down to something nearer to cynicism over the past year) does not allow him to believe that it is feasible. Despite their best efforts and earnest beliefs, their experiment is doomed to fail. Rupert thinks that they have started a war and are throwing away their lives for an impossible dream. He pities them, but he is also angry at the chaos they have caused.

She absorbs this for a few moments, but something in her immediately rebels at his conclusion. She has not seen blood and battle first-hand, not to the degree that he has. But when she thinks of men lining up to fight for what they believe in — when she thinks of Xander with fire in his eyes as he headed off to war — she doesn’t believe it’s a waste. It is  _ something _ , an energy that spreads and amasses and strikes like lightning. She knows that energy, and she feels it crackling within her even as she nods quietly along to what Rupert is saying.

It was never her way (never  _ their _ way) to roll over and agree to anything. She has always been strong-willed, always examined and advocated and challenged. It’s one of the reasons that she and Buffy get along so well. It is one of the reasons that Rupert loves her. It pains her now to hide her opinion, but she knows that this situation is more crucial and dangerous than any other argument they’ve had before.

She pushes aside the thought of what heartbreak this ideological dissonance may bring and imagines a happier future. With any luck, this injury will keep him from the fight, taking away at least some of its immediacy. It could all end without him being involved much more at all, and once the matter is settled, once the war is years behind them, they can cheerfully bicker about ideals and revolution as they always do with everything they hold different opinions on. Then she can finally speak her mind. No bitterness or betrayal is necessary.

This comforts her more than it perhaps should, vague hope that it is. Still, it allows her to swallow the slight pang of guilt that still occasionally rises within her when she lies beside him at night. After their talk, she and Rupert are both more at ease. They even start to joke a bit, and laughter comes easier than it has in years. They have not resolved everything between them, and a few secrets still remain, but the new openness between seems a promise of even brighter times ahead. Even as his secret meetings increase in frequency and intensity (judging from his exhaustion when he exits them), even as he once more becomes immersed in the war, she holds on to this optimism.

Holds on until the day that her world is flipped upside-down in one lurching moment when she sees Buffy slip from the study with one of the officers’ maps clutched tightly to her chest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay between chapters. I'm going to be visiting the Greatest City in the World this next week, which will be fun and will maybe lend itself to some cool research for this fic, but may also frick up the timing of the next chapter. Sorry dudes.


	7. Dismissal (1778)

Buffy freezes when Jenny calls her name.

It comes out impossibly loud, rupturing the silence in the hallway. Jenny tries to think of a reasonable explanation for what she is seeing, cycling through possibilities and discarding them just as quickly. It simply does not make sense. The officers would have no reason to allow Buffy near their supplies, secretive as they’ve been of late. And Buffy should have no reason to take the map. Unless, of course, she is doing the unthinkable — the one possibility Jenny will not consider.

“What are you doing?” she asks instead, trying to keep her voice neutral and hoping that Buffy can offer her an explanation that will make this awful situation disappear. She sweeps in closer, grabbing hold of Buffy’s arm and pulling her urgently out of view of the adjoining hall.

Buffy forces a smile. “Just cleaning up. I thought that room looked really messy, so-”

“Wrong answer,” Jenny snaps. “Buffy, tell me what’s really going on. Now.”

As the initial shock fades away, Buffy’s expression settles back into its usual stubbornness. “I can’t.”

Jenny ignores this ridiculous statement. “Do you know what could have happened if it’d been Rupert or William walking by just now?”  In the back of her mind, Jenny watches the ladder fall, the noose pull taught around the young boy’s neck. “ _ Do you know what they do to spies? _ ”  She catches her voice rising and immediately falls silent, glancing around to be sure nobody has heard and letting out a quiet breath of relief when she reaffirms they are alone. 

Buffy casts her eyes down, having the grace to look a little ashamed. “That’s not what I was doing.”

“For Christ’s sake, Buffy.”

“Fine!” Buffy looks at her with a burning challenge in her eyes. “But don’t tell me I was wrong to do it. I know that you’re on our side. I know that you’ve just been sitting on the sidelines like me, and you’re just as frustrated about it as I am. I had the opportunity to  _ do _ something for once, so I took it. You can’t blame me for that.”

Jenny curses low in her throat, and Buffy’s smile is victorious.

She makes Buffy return the map. She does so a little too willingly, and Jenny suspects that she has already learned all she needs to know. It strikes her that there is no way of telling how much Buffy has seen, or how long she has been a spy. It feels strange to think of that word applying to Buffy, who has always struck Jenny as bright but not particularly subtle. Of course, she must revise that opinion. Buffy has managed to keep this from her for who knows how long (a realization that stings more than it should). Jenny questions her once more, this time in a more secluded location than the hallway, but Buffy refuses to tell her anything else about her activities.

So Jenny dismisses her. She tells Rupert that she’s concerned that Buffy won’t be able to reach her full potential while working as little more than a scullery maid, and then gives Buffy’s father the same excuse. Rupert is confused but eventually agrees, while Hank Summers is slightly offended. Jenny breaks the news to Buffy herself, trying to pretend that she can’t see the hurt beneath her young charge’s cold gaze.

They have to hire a cook this time, as Jenny’s culinary skills haven’t improved at all in the past years of occupation. She manages to track down an odd but industrious girl by the name of Anya. She talks incessantly, but proves to have a knack for figures and an excellent ability to manage household affairs. The girl has wit, in her own way, but her sense of humor is somewhat baffling. Jenny finds herself missing the teasing conversations she would have with Buffy in the kitchens every day, but pushes away any regret that arises. 

What’s done is done, and Buffy would only risk her neck trying to procure more scraps of intelligence if she had been allowed to stay. Jenny knows better than to think that Buffy would stop her activities just because she asked. There is nothing quite so irrepressible as a young spirit with a cause to ruin herself with.

When Rupert sees her sitting on the edge of her bed, her face in her hands as she tries to reason with her choices, he asks her if she is alright. She smiles up at him, but cannot quite look him in the eye when she says that everything is fine. The lie hangs in the air, a cold hollowness that only she can sense. She nearly shivers from it when he leans to give her a comforting touch. Secrets will be the death of them someday.

Alongside her regret for the falsehoods she must tell her husband, Jenny simultaneously feels guilty about Buffy herself. Not only for casting the girl aside, though that weighs on her constantly. She simply cannot shake Buffy’s logic. Jenny has spent the entirety of this war wringing her hands as the people she cares about march off to war. Rupert came home bleeding and half-dead, and Xander has not come home at all. As much as she wants to, she cannot reprehend Buffy’s actions — for just the idea of taking action is at this point so appealing that she cannot imagine she herself would resist if the opportunity came for her to do  _ something  _ to make some kind of difference.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really wanted to have Anya be a Swedish immigrant, but it turns out emigration was illegal in Sweden until 1830. Who knew?


	8. Alibi (1778-1779)

Opportunity proves to be harrowing.

Savannah falls in December, and she can tell by the pride in Rupert’s step when the news breaks that his own plans led the British to success. The thought appalls her to a greater degree than perhaps it should. Sitting in the study, fussing over maps and papers, he seems so distant from the actual fighting that she almost managed to convince herself that he was barely involved in it. Now, it is clear that he has more or less engineered the capture of the city, derailing hundreds of lives and ending dozens more.

It’s not as though the city would have been preserved without his interference, but she cannot believe that his planning had no influence at all on the ease of the British victory. It is startling to hear of such a direct result of his machinations. A single man on the battlefield cannot easily change the tide of war, but an individual tactician of Rupert’s particular skill can certainly come close.

Her suspicion that Savannah is very much Rupert’s own victory is confirmed by the new prestige he receives in its aftermath. There are more high-ranking officials waltzing through their door than ever, and they regard Rupert with substantially less haughtiness than would usually be expected of them. In fact, she detects something akin to respect in their eyes. She want to be proud of him — Rupert has worked long and hard for such recognition, and fully deserves it — but instead only manages to feel ill. There is no way that they will be able to extricate themselves from the war now.

Buffy’s absence does little to improve her mood. The girl all but lived under their roof for two years, and it is jarring to no longer have her around to share a quick smile or a snide comment at the expense of whatever officer has caught their ire. Anya is a welcome distraction in her own way — she is more frank on the subject of sex and men than anyone Jenny has ever met, and their conversations are always entertaining (though Jenny is grateful that she is confined to the kitchen and cannot share her opinions on the general uselessness of the male species with the many officers that fill the house). Despite this, she is not Buffy, and does not offer the same effortless comfort that her young friend had. Jenny never was in the habit of telling Buffy her day-to-day worries, as it didn’t seem fair to burden the girl with such concerns. Sill, Buffy’s cheerful presence was often enough by itself to lift her own melancholy at least slightly.

Throughout the war, Jenny has become proficient in doing without. She will simply have to do the same with Buffy. It is just another brick of misery laid on an already-looming wall. Sometimes she sees Buffy across the street, entering her house or reading at her window, but she always seems to turn away whenever she senses Jenny’s gaze. Another few months drags by without her.

And then opportunity arrives, knocking everything apart.

It’s an accident, when it happens. Ever since catching Buffy with the map, Jenny has been careful to distance herself from the men in the study when they are fiddling about with their plots and secrets. Judging by the scale of Rupert’s victory in Savannah, there are large and dangerous happenings occurring in that room, ones that she knows it is smarter to stay out of.

But one evening, as she stands in front of the door with a tea tray balanced in one hand, she hears mention of  _ Washington _ . This is certainly not unusual, but it is the men’s tone that brings her to a halt with her fingers brushing the doorknob. Instead of the frustration and fury they usually employ upon speaking his name, there is something akin to glee in their voices. She feels the urge to turn and flee back down the hallway, or else proceed inside, putting an end to the conversation and delivering the tray with no questions asked and no knowledged gained.

There is another part of her — a stronger part of her — that makes her freeze in place, forces her to listen. It is the part that remembers that glorious day in July, the parade ground packed with soldiers and Xander, Willow, and Buffy at her shoulder. It remembers that voice that carried across the assembled mass and stirred something fierce and resilient within her. That same feeling rises up again in this moment, pushing away all but a small pulse of fear as she leans in.

William is speaking, his usual air of purposeful indifference abandoned in favor of the outright elation that she can practically feel despite the several inches of door between them.

“We’ve got the bastard. He’s going to walk right into our hands.”

“And you are certain that your information is reliable?”

The second voice is low but commanding. Travers, she assumes. The undercurrent of excitement in his voice is palpable, and so different than his habitual reservation that, when paired with William’s erratic behavior, she cannot help but feel that something is very wrong.

“Of course it is,” William snorts. “I know what I’m about, and I always get my man.”

“If it’s true, then we should put together a force at once to intercept the General at Hartford.”

That one is Rupert. She has no trouble identifying him, but his businesslike manner in the face of what the men are discussing sends a shiver through her.

“Leave that to me,” Travers says. “If we manage this, we may well put an end to this war in one stroke.”

“Imagine it,” William muses. “I’m going to be the one to bag Washington.”

The milk pitcher falls off of her tea tray.

Jenny almost snatches at it as it tumbles through the air, but even shifting one hand is almost enough to upset the entire tray and send everything crashing to the ground. She manages to steady herself, but the traitorous pitcher still shatters on the floor. The sound is loud and striking, and all conversation in the room halts at once.

Blind panic grips her, but instinct makes her drop to the ground and begin gathering up jagged bits of ceramic. The door swings open in an instant, and it is William that stares down at her with narrowed eyes.

“Sorry,” she says, forcing an apologetic smile to her lips. It feels too stretched, and her mouth is dry, but she keeps it in place as best as she can. “The milk fell when I was trying to knock on the door.”

“Did it, now?” His gaze is painfully acute, taking her measure and stripping her bare as she crouches over the rug. Jenny tries and fails to keep her shoulders from tensing.

“I should have called for someone to open it for me, but I didn’t want to interrupt” — she waves a hand erratically in the direction of the assembled men — “whatever you were doing in there. I know how busy you are.”

Travers appears at William’s shoulder, a terrible scowl on his face. “What is this?”

Jenny repeats her alibi. Her heart is no longer racing quite as quickly, but it still knocks with uncomfortable intensity in her chest. She does not have a plan, does not have any concrete thoughts on her situation aside from  _ get out of this _ . When Rupert slips between the two other men to stand in front of her, she cannot look him in the eye.

She tells him that everything is fine, that there’s no need to fuss, that she’s terribly embarrassed and she’s going to run to fetch a rag and clean up the mess. She expects to be stopped, to be interrogated on the spot, but Rupert nods and Travers turns away with an irritated scowl. However, she can still feel William’s eyes boring into her back as she hurries down the hall.

Anya squints at her when she stumbles into the kitchen, short of breath and nearly shaking. “What happened to you?”

Jenny tells Anya about the spilled milk and asks her to tidy it up, explaining she has urgent business elsewhere. Anya complains that household cleanup isn’t what she was hired for, but happily agrees to do so when offered a bonus. With the matter settled, Jenny buttons up her coat and hurries across the street through the early spring chill.

Hank Summers greets her coolly when she knocks on the door, but she manages to persuade him to let her see Buffy by dropping vague hints that one of the officers is interested in courting his daughter. Delighted by the prospect, he leads her to Buffy’s room and, miraculously, leaves them alone.

Buffy’s expression is ice, except for the slight anger crackling underneath. “Why are you here? I think you’ve already made it very clear-”

She starts as Jenny grabs her arm. “Buffy. Listen to me. Who did you talk to? Who did you tell?”

“I’d never give them up,” Buffy tells her coldly. “Not to the likes of you.” That would sting, if not for the urgency that pulses through Jenny’s very blood and pushes all other feeling aside.

“ _ They’re going to kidnap Washington, _ ” she hisses. “I need to know who to go to, how to stop this. Please.”

Buffy stares at her, shock and suspicion and genuine fear warring on her features. Then she nods, snatches up Jenny’s hand, and pulls her out of the house.

It is early evening, but the sun is already dusky in the sky as they race pell-mell through the streets. Buffy must be bursting with questions, but voices none of them in an effort to conserve her breath as they plunge deeper into the city. At first Jenny does not recognize the area of town that they are heading toward, and only once the tailor’s shop comes into view does she realize where they are.

“It’s  _ Willow _ ?”

Buffy shakes her head. “Of course not. Just come on.”

They fly down another street, take a sharp right, and then Buffy turns abruptly into the nearest doorway. She knocks on the door once, a sharp rap, while Jenny glances around at their surroundings. They building Buffy has brought them to is a common dry goods store. It seems a perfectly ordinary place — until the door flies open and she finds a musket pointed directly in their faces. Jenny flinches black, smothering a shout.

“Faith, it’s me,” Buffy snaps, apparently unperturbed by the alarming welcome. “Let me inside, I’ve got something important.”

“Summers?” The gun’s wielder steps back, and Jenny sees for the first time that it is a girl not much older than Buffy that nearly shot them. “Get in here.” She pulls the two of them inside, bolting the door behind them before looking Jenny up and down with great mistrust in her eyes.

“Where is he?” Buffy demands the moment they are over the threshold.

“Wait just a minute,” the girl — Faith — responds. “Who is this? And what are you doing here? I thought you said your source dried up a couple months ago.”

“It did. But she knows something, and she needs to talk to him.  _ Now. _ ”

Faith forgoes a sarcastic response, perhaps sensing the intensity of the moment, and jerks her head in the direction of the nearby staircase. Buffy takes off immediately, and Jenny follows as she reaches the second floor and halts in front of a particularly thick wooden door. She knocks again, and Jenny finds herself holding her breath.

A thousand questions sear through her mind. She does not know if her husband is searching for her at home, if the officers are on her heels at this moment. She does not know what she will find in this room. She does not know what the consequences of this insane, impulsive action will be.

What she does know is this: she could not live with herself if she stood silent and did nothing, if the revolution broke to pieces upon her shoulders. Whatever happens here, she will find a way to manage.

A voice within the room calls upon them to enter, and Buffy opens the door and leads them inside.

The man waiting at the desk for them looks as deceptively ordinary as the storefront, at first glance. Then Jenny notices the thick scar at his throat and the steel in his eyes. He registers surprise and then confusion as he glances between the two of them. His eyes narrow at this; he is obviously a man unused to being left in the dark.

“This is Jennifer Giles,” Buffy says by way of introduction. “She’s the officer’s wife I was telling you about.”

“Wesley,” the man replies, rising from his chair to approach them. “Wesley Wyndam-Pryce. Now, what is this about?”

“She overheard something big. Something about Washington. I thought it’d be best if she told you herself.”

Wesley’s eyes fly to Jenny, knife-sharp and bright with sudden tension. She nods once, summoning the words, fighting against the buzzing in her head that hasn’t ceased since she first heard mention of that name in the study.

“They were talking about… they said he would walk right into their hands. They’re setting a trap for him.”

“When? Where?” Wesley asks immediately.  
“I don’t…” Jenny shakes her head, helpless. “I don’t know when. But they mentioned Hartford.”

Wesley considers this, his face unreadable. “I know that this must be difficult.”  Jenny swallows and says nothing. “I will make sure that this reaches the right people. You have my thanks — and perhaps that of the entire Continental Army, if what you have told me is true.”

He returns to his desk and begins scribbling furiously. Clearly dismissed, they retreat back to the hallway. Buffy turns to her and asks, quietly, if she will be alright. Jenny says yes. It is just another lie in the long series that will inevitably follow, she knows.

Faith greets them again at the door. She is forceful and eager, inquiring after the latest news and speaking to Buffy with a friendly roughness obviously built on camaraderie. Buffy brushes her aside with instructions to ask Wesley for an update as she and Jenny step out into the newly-fallen night. The walk home is slower than the all-out flight they assumed to reach the dry goods store. Jenny takes the time to think, to put her alibi in order and prepare for the worst upon her return. Buffy is fiercely against her going home at all, insisting that she try to make arrangements with Wesley for immediate evacuation to some sort of safe haven, but the idea of leaving Rupert with no explanation is nearly nauseating to her. Exhausted and still somewhat in shock, she wants nothing more than to see his face. It is the paradoxical nature of the new situation she has brought upon herself that she also cannot imagine ever laying eyes on him again, for she is certain that the betrayal will drip like tar from her mouth when she next tries to smile at him.

When they part in the street between their houses, Buffy holds her hands very tightly and thanks her. All of the bitterness, all of the pain in her voice is gone, and Jenny is thankful for that one mercy.

Tension clamps onto her spine as she tiptoes through the front door, and it does not leave her until Anya informs her that the men have not so much as left the study since Jenny departed on her illicit errand, much less asked after her. Jenny lets the breath gust out of her in relief and thanks Anya profusely enough for the girl to give her an odd look.

Stumbling to her bedroom, Jenny cannot shake the fear that men will be waiting for her in the hallway, will spring out and drag her to the study, will tear the information out of her with hooks and claws and knives while William chortles, blood on his clothes, and Rupert watches with impassive eyes as the floor grows slick and she thrashes, screaming—

And then he  _ is _ there, and she almost shoves him away before realizing that her fears morphed into actual nightmares as she fell asleep. This Rupert is real, and he holds her in their bed and strokes her hair. When he asks the subject of her dream, she says that she dreamed about the ways the war may hurt them.

She is almost thankful that she does not have to lie, not this time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay. So there was actually a vaguely-documented and sketchy plot to kidnap Washington in 1779, but I meddled a bit with the details because 1) it actually happened during the winter and 2) it was discovered and prevented by a certain Hercules Mulligan, not our darling Jenny.  
> Wesley in this fic is more of his Angel persona, but since he originated on Buffy and was Very Much a Character there, it's not technically a crossover.


	9. Corners (1779)

Jenny catches on quickly to her new position.

Arrangements are made, and systems aligned. Because Jenny still does not like the idea of Buffy being on the front lines, so to speak (and how Jenny hates it that her home has become the battlefield), she does not return to serve as cook. Besides, such a turnabout would be awkward and perhaps suspicious, and the latter is something she can no longer afford. Instead, they pay each other occasional visits, usually taking a stroll or sitting in the Summers’ garden while they whisper bits of secrets back and forth. This is the extent of Jenny’s job as messenger, but the entire process her information takes to reach Wesley has become entirely more elaborate than the first risky, desperate dash to his headquarters. 

Once Buffy has spoken with Jenny, she then visits with Willow and relays what she has learned. (The two girls apparently used this same system the entire time that Buffy was spying as Jenny’s chef, and Jenny cannot even bring herself to be surprised that quick, clever Willow makes an excellent spy.) Living so close to his dry goods store, it is perfectly natural that the a Rosenberg stops by every few days to pick up a bit of thread or a bolt of cloth when they are running low. Willow then enlightens Wesley what Buffy has told her — and thus, in this convoluted chain, the information at last reaches his ears.

The extreme amount of secrecy alarms Jenny somewhat, if only for the fact that it makes the whole business seem as dangerous as it really is. Still, she is grateful for any insulation from suspicion such roundabout maneuvering can provide for all of them, so she follows Wesley’s directives to the letter.

She knows that it would be better if she walked away. She gave the spies crucial information, yes, but only because something as large as Washington himself was at stake. This day-to-day eavesdropping is so very intrusive and risky, and another beast entirely from her first accidental act of espionage. But when Buffy came by to recruit her in earnest, to say that Jenny could save lives and  _ make such a difference _ , she couldn’t bring herself to refuse. In fact, she is somewhat ashamed at how little time she took to consider her answer before saying yes. Because even if this is terrifying, even if it is stepping lightly and her heart in her throat as she listens, it is still  _ something _ . And anything is better than sitting at home with a smile as artificial as wax as the war rages around her.

Most of what she hears is likely useless — regiment names and numbers that mean nothing to her, or else news of petty bickering between various generals and officials. Still, she delivers her reports dutifully and hopes that Wesley can make some sense of it. Jenny isn’t allowed to know much about the man, in the interest of preserving his secrecy, but Buffy is of the opinion that he must have served with the British forces at some point in his history. As to how he came by Faith, neither of them are entirely sure. Jenny believes his story that Faith truly is his young ward, adopted out of obligation and perhaps some mutual affection, but Buffy postulates that they’re simply two agents working together — Wesley is the mastermind, and Faith is his bodyguard. (She doesn’t seem to know if she means it entirely as a joke or not.)

Such speculation is useless, and would probably be discouraged by Wesley if he learned of it. However, it is a bit of levity and friendly chatter that Jenny desperately needs. As spring slips away, the implications of her new duty weigh heavily upon her. Her earlier betrayals were only in spirit and thought, and even those made it hard for her too look at Rupert without feeling a pang of guilt. Now that she has taken genuine action against his cause, and continues to do so day in and day out, it is nearly impossible for her to even be in the same room as him.

A new distance yawns between them, worse even than the one that plagued them after Saratoga. They ghost by each other in the halls and sleep on opposite sides of their bed. Rupert is busier than ever, and often his blankets are cool and empty when she awakens in the morning. He seems to believe that she has at last begun to resent him for his continual absence in her life, for at first he makes overtures to appease her. Jenny, for her part, cannot bear to accept his sweet words and gentle touches — it is hard enough to simply glance at him without her features shattering like china. Still, her heart cannot help but sink when he gives up on reconciliation, when the shutters go down in his eyes each time she ducks her head and passes by without a word. These days, she is more likely to snatch bits of his voice from around corners and through doors than hold an actual conversation with her husband.

It is a grey and desolate house she keeps, and even her visits with Buffy are tinged with fear and caution that cannot be overcome by jokes or forcedly cheerful gossip. There is no reprieve from the creeping sense that some suspicion is crawling upon her, that this sin against home and family will eventually catch up with her. The tension is constant, the fear inescapable. Her house no longer belongs to her. She is the rat in the larder, the snake in the grass, and sooner or later someone will notice the vermin. One wrong step, one more toppled pitcher, and she knows that justice will come crashing down about her ears. She dreams of the hanged boy some nights, of the way the rope pulled taut and the heavy, rasping sound he made.

(She tries not to wonder how much it hurts.)

The months slink by. She finds that she is losing weight and sleeping poorly; the hollows under her eyes are deep and dull. The worst part, perhaps, is that she can think of no way to change this terrible state of being. There is nothing else to do but go forward with this until the end: even if she stopped this madness now, she has known enough guilt that her life would never be the same. It is a crooked path she has chosen, and she is bound to follow it where it will lead her.

The summer, when it comes, bears down heavy and restless, and doubt creeps in just as swiftly as the rush of heat that surrounds the city. Every scrap of information she picks up is worthless and garbled, and every corner she turns seems to have William or Travers lurking behind it. Cold sweats steal across her brow, but the days are so sweltering that nobody pays it any mind.

It is the fall that finally brings a bounty of intelligence. She catches Rupert and William talking in low, urgent tones in the hallway when she awakens in the middle of one October night, and manages to tiptoe close enough to make out a few details about British provisions in Savannah. The Colonial Army has had the city under siege for months, and the information she gleans does not bode well for their chances to retake it, but Jenny is ecstatic to have something of worthwhile to report. 

The first days of November brings another revelation: there are whispers that General Clinton will sail against Charleston in the winter. Again with a feeling of some accomplishment (more grim than joyful, but welcome nonetheless), she relays this Wesley. For the first time, Buffy returns with a message back from him. Buffy looks troubled yet urgent as she delivers his reply. They need more information, Wesley says. She must dig deeper.

Used to only gleaning what she can from scraps of random conversations, the idea of hunting for specific facts in new and daunting. She almost quails, almost asks Buffy  _ why _ this must be done, but she of course knows the answer. This is a crucial enough development to warrant more risk. Wesley would not ask it of her if this was not the case. She has met with him thrice during her eight months of service, in occasional and secretive in-person visits when timing was appropriate, and he has never struck her as anything other than a deliberate, calculating man — but one with genuine concern for his agents, and not likely to carelessly encourage them into danger.

So, swallowing her reservations, she nods, returns home, and begins planning. It is unlikely that she will again stumble upon such a fortuitous conversation, even if she eavesdrops ceaselessly and fearlessly over the next weeks. She may eventually catch a relevant scrap, but time is of the essence in this matter. Instead, she decides that the time has come to take her treasonous activities one step further: she will break into the study.

With the room being a part of her home, such an act is of course not technically a burglary. But as she lays in bed, waiting as the house goes still around her, she cannot help but know it to be a crime. When at last all is silence, she lingers for another quarter hour before slipping out of bed and padding down the hall in her nightgown. She rehearses excuses in her head as she carefully avoids the stairs she knows to creak the loudest, but none of them seem reasonable enough explanations to justify her presence such a clandestine room. She must simply hope that she will not need them

Jenny meets no one in her descent, and reaches the the study with nerves bound tight and quiet to her chest. She cannot help but reminded of her first time listening in front of this door, of the decision that sent her life spinning. It seems ill luck to dwell on such a thing, so she takes a deep breath and steps inside. The room is pitch black, and she is grateful for the tiny candle she has brought along. Holding it aloft, she slips inside and closes the door behind her.

The meeting table is covered with maps and parchments, some scattered about and some piled neatly. There is no way of telling where to begin; the handwriting in which they are transcribed varies from Rupert’s tidy script to unintelligible scrawls, and both are equally difficult to decipher in the dim glow of the candle. She dare not bring her light any closer, for fear of singing a paper or dripping a bit of wax, and so instead squints desperately as she scans for any mention of Charleston. 

Minutes flicker by, and still she finds nothing. Panic begins to set in, pinching at the back of her neck and setting her hands atremble. She forces herself to remain steady, to remember to return each document to its exact previous position, but the worry tugs at her focus. Rupert may wake and find her missing, or else somebody will see the light under the door, or—

She almost misses it, tossing the paper aside and then snatching it back when her mind catches up with exactly what she has read.  _ Charleston  _ and  _ preparing for a siege _ and  _ our Esteemed General Clinton _ lean out at her from the parchment, and she pulls her candle as near as she dares, straining to make out more. This is it, she realizes, hope and relief blazing within her chest. This is what she has come for.

A soft noise comes from behind her.

She spins at once, sending a stack of papers cascading to the floor, but a hand flies out and catches her wrist in a grip as tight as a snare. Everything in her freezes and plummets at once, like icicles tumbling to shatter upon the cobblestones.

“Well now,” William says, “what have we here?”


	10. Turn (1779)

Jenny bites back a cry.

William’s eyes are bright and almost amused as he looks her up and down. A gloating smile curves at his mouth.

“You know, you aren’t as clever as you think you are.” Deftly, he snatches the paper from her hand and glances over it. “So this is what you’re after. The Charleston campaign.”

Jenny bites at her lip, her eyes watering from the pressure of his hold upon her. “I-I was just tidying up. I wasn’t-” Dimly, she reflects that it is the same excuse Buffy gave her so long ago when she was caught stealing a map from this very room.

It proves to be just as ineffective a lie this time. William actually snorts, and a hungry look crosses his handsome features. “Don’t try to play games with me — you haven’t got a chance of winning. No, I’ve seen you about, skulking around the place and offering up those sweet little smiles. I’ve suspected for ages.”

“I told you, I’m only-”

“Shut up.” His voice is soft, but with an edge of violence in it that makes her quail immediately. “I knew nobody would listen if I told them, ‘specially not that soft little husband of yours. But I knew if I watched and waited, you’d have to slip up sometime.” He leans in closer, holding her tight even as she tries to flinch away. “And you have. You’ve slipped right into my arms.”

Jenny can barely breathe. There is a surreality to the moment that warps her perceptions — everything is perfectly clear, but so far beyond her ability to accept that it seems like a chaotic dream. William drags her down the hall behind him, stopping at the next door to rouse the soldier sleeping there. He sends him to fetch Travers at the British command center near the harbor, promising news that Travers will be very glad to hear. To her surprise, he does not then awaken the rest of the household, but leads her back to the study to wait. She itches to pace about the room, but William gives her a warning look when she moves, so she instead withdraws a chair with trembling hands and seats herself at the table like a placid supper guest. Neither of them speaks, but she feels the fierce, wolfish triumph in his eyes as they burn into her.

She grasps for a solution, for some means of escape, and catches nothingness; everything within her has been swept aside, and her mind clicks uselessly in a white panic. Dazedly, she wonders if Rupert will even defend her. She cannot help but flinch when she hears the front door swing open, loud as a cannon shot in the midnight quiet of the house. William’s smirk deepens, and he slouches into a swagger in anticipation. Travers appears in the doorway a moment later, holding aloft a lantern and sporting a murderous expression.

“I trust that you have a good reason for waking me at this ungodly hour, Pratt,” he says warningly, but his severe expression drops a degree toward curiosity when his eyes light upon Jenny.

“Yes, well, I’d hate to have disturbed your beauty sleep — God knows you need it.” He jerks his head toward his captive to dispel the storm clouds that gather on Travers’ brow at his flippancy. “I’ve found our rat.”

“Her?” Now the older officer’s gaze turns calculating. “You believe that this woman is the breach in our intelligence operations?”

“Yep. Personally responsible for bungling the Washington mission, I’d wager.”

“Who is this? How did you find her?” Travers demands.

“Are you blind?” William snorts incredulously. “This is Giles’ wife, the lady of the house. Remember?”

Of course wives and women are beneath Travers’ notice. Jenny would almost find humor in the situation, if she wasn’t watching recognition and then cold anger rise in his eyes. She does not know where to look, or whether she should speak up; to smile at him as though nothing were amiss would be worse than a farce. She settles for meeting his gaze dead-on. A reckless courage is rising within her as she begins to understand the full hopelessness of her situation. There is nothing she can say to defend herself, nothing she can say to reduce the absolute devastation that is about to befall her. Thus, she is free to say anything she wishes. Nothing matters now.

“I’ve served you tea and biscuits every day for three years, and you can’t even remember my name?” It is a reckless sort of joy she receives at the way his eyes narrow, and she savors it as best as she can. There is a fatalistic courage behind her now, clearing her head and lending strength to her focus. She can answer, she can evade, she can even suffer the consequences of her actions, as long as she can keep her dignity intact.

And then Rupert appears in the doorway, hair tousled by sleep and features stricken with bewilderment, and her world once again crumbles beneath her feet.

“Major Travers, William.” He greets them respectfully, but his eyes fall immediately upon her. “What is happening here?”

“Rupert,” she says, and she hates how desperate she has suddenly become. “Rupert, please, I-”

“Quiet,” Travers says dismissively, and she falls silent as though slapped. “Our William here,” he continues, turning toward her husband, “claims to have discovered a spy in our midst. Your wife, to be precise.”

Rupert goes stock-still. Jenny waits for him to look at her, waits for the shock and outrage, but he does not turn. Perhaps he is afraid of what he will see. “Impossible,” he says instead, still resolutely facing Travers. “He is mistaken, surely. Or else he has gone completely mad, to accuse my wife in such a way.”

“Be reasonable, man,” Travers responds, irritation coloring his voice. “He’s one of our most trusted and effective intelligence operatives. But I’ll admit, I’m curious as to how he came to this conclusion. William, tell us how you came to discover her.”

“Right,” William says easily. “I’ve had a hunch about this one ever since she caused that ruckus outside the door all those back, making a mess of that tea tray. I started sleeping in here after that. Figured the place could use some extra security anyway, and I thought I might catch this one with her hands in the butter.”

“And?” Travers prompts. Jenny stares at Rupert, willing him to just _look_ at her, but he only stares at William with dread creeping across his features.

“Caught her sneaking around in here not even an hour ago. She was looking for information about Charleston. I found this on her.” He hands the paper he snatched from her to Travers, who regards her sharply.

“Do you deny this?” he asks.

And at last, with damning finality, Rupert meets her eye. She is paralyzed by what she finds in his face — hope, a desperation to match hers, and at the very edges, a bitter horror that grows stronger every moment that she is silent. She grapples wildly with herself to decide how to answer. Lying is pointless. But to tell him the truth, to tear away everything they have created for themselves in the past thirteen years with one word? It is impossible. Jenny opens her mouth to speak, but nothing comes out. The terror of indecision has frozen her tongue.

“What of it?” William asks. “Have you got anything to say for yourself?”

Jenny swallows hard, never looking away from her husband. “I never meant for this to happen. I didn’t… Rupert, I love you-”

But he has already turned away, all trace of emotion shoved brutally from his features. His eyes are cold and distant — anyone who did not know him as well as she does would not detect the raw agony reeling in their depths.

“It would appear that’s settled, then,” Travers says, suddenly businesslike. “William, take a few men and bring her down to the sugar house on Crown Street. Find out who she’s been informing and what she’s told them. Do what you must to get her to cooperate.”

And then a strong arm grasps her shoulder, hauling her to her feet and toward the door. She stumbles, wrenching her neck to stare behind her. Travers watches with something like distaste, while William follows with that hungry look back on his face. But Rupert stands with his shoulder toward her, staring determinedly at the wall. She cries out his name, practically screaming, but he does not turn as she is dragged into the night.


	11. Reckoning (1779)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for violence and some pretty intense stuff during this chapter.

From the outside, the sugar house looks perfectly innocent.

She has passed by it on occasion, living in the city, and at first she cannot fathom why she is being brought here. The smell strikes her as soon as she is bundled through the door, shit and vomit and rotting meat mingling to make her nearly retch on the doorstep, and suddenly she remembers the rumors of warehouses the British have converted to hold people instead of goods. There is a faint moaning that can be heard from all sides, as though the building itself is in the throes of some terrible disease. Jenny cannot see where she is being led, spots swimming before her eyes as she fights off nausea. She stumbles as she is dragged down a flight of stairs, which causes some voice in the darkness ahead to curse at her. 

The room that they at last lead her to is cramped and dark, barely large enough to fit the single chair crammed inside it. She is shoved inside and the door is closed behind her, banishing the light of the soldiers’ lanterns and plunging her into pitch blackness. She leans against the wall, panting, trying to settle her heart and her stomach. A minute passes. Then five more.

Jenny cannot keep her hands from shaking. The room is cold, and she has no cloak to fend off the chill — but it is more fear than anything that makes them tremble, even with her fingers laced so tightly together that her knuckles are white. She knows very little of what treatment spies are afforded; Rupert never discussed such subjects with her, and Wesley only advised her on how to avoid detection, not what to do in the event that she was caught. Her only experience with such justice began and ended at the hanging tree.

Half an hour crawls by. Dread digs its claws into the skin of her shoulders, and she feels as though it is flaying her alive. She wonders if they have found out Buffy, or even Willow, Wesley, and Faith. William did not mention that he was suspicious of anyone other than herself, but it would not be difficult to put together the pieces. Perhaps that is why nobody is interrogating her now; perhaps the officers that brought her here are now too busy pounding on Buffy’s door to bother with her. She tries to ignore such wild and treacherous speculations, but they will not leave her. 

A full hour has passed. Surely, something will soon give, and in will flood the reckoning. She longs for it. The anticipation of what will come has become intolerable, a pulsing anxiety that washes over her in waves.

Then the door creaks open, sending a dim light spilling across her face, and she immediately longs for solitude again.

William regards her steadily, only the faintest hint of his usual smile upon his lips. He sets his lantern down in front of the chair, but does not approach.

“Have a seat,” he says pleasantly.

Jenny shakes her head, feeling her breath quicken in her chest. He cocks his head slightly, an odd expression on his face. It is focus, she realizes. She is so used to seeing William swaggering and triumphant that this intensity of purpose is unsettling. He takes a step toward her, and she cannot help but flinch away.

“Steady there,” he says, halting. “We’re just going to have a little chat. Just sit yourself down now, and we can get this all sorted.”

“No.” It is childish to refuse such a simple request, but she does not want to give him any illusions about her willingness to cooperate. Jenny knows she has failed everyone, allowing herself to be caught and thus putting all of them at risk. She’ll be damned if she breathes a single word that will imperil them further.

William nods slowly. “You know, I don’t work with women much.” He moves forward slowly, deliberately, and she fights the urge to back away. 

She is not some mouse to be chased into the corner. She is prey to no man. She will not cower; she is Jennifer Giles — and here she falters, because she does not know if she can claim that name any longer. 

William chooses this moment to seize onto her shoulder and throw her roughly into the opposite wall.

Her head slams into the brick and a white jolt flashes through her consciousness. She falls heavily. A soft whine is ringing in her ears, and when she puts a hand to her temple her fingers are damp with blood.

“Being gentle isn’t a strong suit of mine, you see,” William continues conversationally. “I’m not really one for delicate sensibilities. So I figure I’ll treat you just like all the men that come through here. Should work just the same.” He crouches down and leans in close, his eyes shining. “Only I imagine you’ll break easier.”

Dazed and wobbly, she does little to resist as he heaves her into the chair. He himself remains standing, prowling in circles around her as he fires off questions. He speaks so quickly that he cannot expect for her to answer, and his words blur together in her ears.

“Who were you in contact with?”

“What information did you share with them?”

“How did you communicate?”

“Where are they located?”

_ “Who were you in contact with?” _

She focuses on a dark stain on the earthen floor and says nothing. William waits for a moment and then strikes her. She nearly falls from the chair, but he grabs her arm and holds her in place. 

“Give me their names,” he tells her, “and we can stop this. You can go home to your Rupert, if he’ll still have you, and we can forget this ever happened.”

She doesn’t believe it. Can’t believe it. Even if it’s true, she’s never going to tell him, so it’s not even worth considering. Everything is muddled, her thoughts smearing together and losing the edges of their meaning. All that persists is terror, though even that has become somewhat wilder and less focused.

The next hours pass in a blur.

William screams and shouts, whispers and soothes. He offers to fetch bandages for her head one moment and threatens to beat her bloody the next. Over and over, he asks his questions, and Jenny never says a word.

(She only sobs, low and shuddering.)

There is no way to tell how much time has passed, no way to know if she has been here for moments or hours or days. She thinks she should be thirsty, perhaps, and tired, but those needs feel utterly detached from the present moment. All that exists right now is the noise, the fear, the hideous pain in her head.

It ends, for the moment, when William violently tips her chair to the ground. She falls hard, startled out of the haze that crept upon her, arms flailing out to keep her skull from crashing into the floor. Her weight lands on one hand with an audible crack. She cries out, clutching at her wrist (it shouldn’t be bent that way, oh  _ God _ ), but William merely storms from the room, slamming the door so hard it rattles.

Jenny does not weep in the moments of quiet before the other men come to fetch her. Even that is beyond her now.

She is led back up the shadowy staircases to another room, this one far larger than the last — but occupied by at least twenty men. They look more animal than human, eyes sunken, hair matted, and clothes covered with filth. A few occupy the scattered wooden bed frames pressed against the walls, but most are on the the ground, some crouching and others sprawled out like so many corpses. Only a few bother to look up as she is forced into the room with them, and those that do only watch with vacant expressions.

The horrible scent that she noticed upon first entering the sugar house is nearly overpowering in this place. The floor is covered with excrement and sick, yet the men lie on the foul straw seemingly without care. She stands just inside the doorway for a moment, hesitating, but the pounding in her head compels her to find some some form of support before her legs give way beneath her. She picks her way across to the farthest corner, occasionally muttering apologies as she stumbles over an outstretched limb or a body huddled in the dark, but nobody acknowledges her.

Exhausted more than seems possible by her journey across the room, Jenny slumps to the floor despite its vile smell. Her wrist pulses with a jagged pain. Her head aches. The days ahead loom before her, a bleak and merciless tunnel that she suspects will never lead to daylight. It is too much to consider right now, but the thought of it wells up inside of her in a tide as black as ink.

A hoarse noise from beside her shakes her from her reverie, and she squints into the darkness. There is a boy slumped over near her elbow, and he looks up at her with confusion for a moment before, inexplicably, smiling. Something viscous shines on his teeth — blood, seeping out from his gums to make his smile gleam from the shadows. She recoils, scrambling a few feet away before the pain in her wrist forces her to stop crawling. Instead she closes her eyes and pretends to be at home in front of the hearth, reading next to Rupert as afternoon sun slants in through the window. She is fatigued enough that the impossibility of such a dream does not faze her. Eventually, she shudders into sleep.

(When she wakes, the boy is dead, his grin red and wide in the dim morning light.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sugar houses and other British prisons throughout New York City saw some of the worst atrocities of the war. It's terrible, but unfortunately not well-remembered.


	12. Delirium (1779)

She wishes to die.

It is not a longing, for such strong emotions rarely cross over her any longer. The raw wound of fear and pain congealed after the first week, scabbing over and suppressing every other sensation in the process. All that she knows now is a deep ache, one that permeates every inch of her body but lacks the sharp edge it held earlier.

Her head heals after a few days, but her wrist does not improve. She takes to cradling that arm to her chest at all times, though this does little to banish its constant pangs. She knows that it is broken, but also knows that it would be useless to request medical aid for such a trivial matter. All around her, men wither and die in droves. She suspects scurvy, from the way their mouths bleed and their teeth loosen, but many simply succumb to starvation. Prisoners are provided with only hardtack and salted pork, nearly always rancid — but even when they have scraped away the mold and picked out the whitish worms, there is never enough to eat.

Water is rarely given by the guards, but drips freely from the rotting roof during rainstorms to turn the floor into a foul stew. Infections and illness run rampant. She is caught by some ailment in her third week at the sugar house, and coughs until her lungs feel as though they will turn inside-out. Nobody pays her any mind, and she thinks vaguely that she will die this way, forgotten on the moldy straw. They will sew her into a sack and dump her into the sea, as she has heard tell that this is the fate that awaits all expired prisoners. She wonders what they will tell Rupert. (She wonders if he will care.) But her fever breaks the next dawn, and she drags herself back into living.

William interrogates her every day, at first. He does not throw her about anymore (although one time he grabs onto her injured wrist and squeezes until she shrieks). But his questions are just as relentless, his eyes just as steely. Still, she does not say a word.

She thinks about William sometimes, during those times when his voice is rough in her ear and her mind will latch onto any distraction. Does he enjoy this? Or is it a sense of duty — much like the one Rupert has clung to all his life — that leads him to inflict such terrors upon her? Either way, she cannot bring herself to try to further understand him.

He starts to bring her in less often. Days pass between his attempts at questioning. Then a week. After the twentieth day, he does not send for her at all. It seems that she has been forgotten. She begins to realize that, all in all, she is largely insignificant. William is good at what he does, and he may be needed elsewhere for more important issues of intelligence.

Or else he has given up on breaking her, and will leave that to the sugar house itself.

Jenny was born to some wealth, and grew up as no stranger to silk and silver. Rupert was near a pauper when they first ran away together, but even then she always had a soft bed and a fire in the hearth. Never in her life has she known conditions such as these. Never has she known a hunger that wrenches at her insides; never has she known constant and pitiless indignities. Now, it seems impossible that she has ever known anything else.

December brings with it a cold that bites rather than worries. She still wears the same nightgown that she arrived in, and it does little to provide warmth. The prisoners take to huddling together at night, forming a pile of human misery. It helps to keep them warm, but each morning they must shuffle about to pick out the living from those who have died overnight.

Sometimes she forgets why she is here, and cannot fathom what she has done to deserve such a fate. Her reasons for resisting William’s questions seem less clear but somehow more vital. _Keep them secret. Keep them safe._ It is a mantra she has repeated so many times that it is ingrained in her very being, even though she no longer entirely certain who it applies to. Faces blur together in her mind, and she cannot keep straight who exactly she is meant to be protecting.

But she has come to terms with the fact that she will die in here, and she figures she may as well keep one last promise.

Then, almost a month after her last round of questioning, Jenny is summoned again. Jailers wake her in the dead of night, kicking aside the other prisoners as they make their way across the cell to drag her out and down to the interrogation room. Bleary and barely awake, she sits herself in the chair and waits for William to appear. Perhaps he believes that the sugar house has done its job on her, and that she will now be ready to confess. Jenny straightens in her seat, despite the way her every joint protests. She is ready to prove him wrong.

It is not William that enters, however, but a young soldier. His uniform is too big for him, and his hat skewed awkwardly over one ear. She squints at his face, trying to make out his features.

“Jenny?” he asks, and she freezes. There is something familiar in that voice, something that she cannot put her finger on, but it sends her reeling. “Jenny?” The voice is more certain this time. The lantern is lifted, throwing and the soldier’s face into sharp relief — and everything, for the first time in nearly two months, shifts into clarity.

“Buffy,” she whispers, and they fall upon each other. They embrace so tightly that she can feel Buffy’s heart thumping beside her own, and she presses her face to the girl’s shoulder and nearly weeps. She wonders if this is a dream (she has had so many like this very moment), but Buffy feels real and steady beneath her even as Jenny begins to shake. Buffy pulls away at last, swallowing hard to keep her own tears at bay.

“We don’t have much time. They’re going to realize that William isn’t here soon enough, and then they’ll come looking. We need to be gone by then.”

“How—” Jenny croaks, but Buffy silences her.

“Later. We need to move.”

Buffy takes Jenny’s bad hand, but releases it immediately when she hisses in pain. Jenny offers her other arm, which Buffy takes with an a whispered apology (though Jenny can tell a furious wrath is brewing inside her). Though she blows out the lantern before they depart, her steps are steady as she brings them up one flight of stairs and then another, to a section of the prison Jenny has never seen. They duck into a small room, and Jenny nearly yelps when she catches sight of a prison guard asleep on the floor.

“That one’s not waking up anytime soon,” Buffy assures her, a note of satisfaction in her voice. “He’s got a fondness for hard cider — and I gave him a good pint of it earlier this evening.”  Buffy steps smartly over the drunken wretch and proceeds to the window, which she opens with exceeding care before leaning out to peer into the night. A small light winks out at them from across the street. “There’s the signal,” Buffy tells her. “Nobody’s around. We’re safe to leave.”

Before Jenny can make any inquiry, Buffy withdraws a length of rope from beneath her undershirt. She quickly ties one end to the jailer's desk, a sturdy wooden thing, and then turns to Jenny with a grin — one that fades abruptly when she sees the stricken look on her face.

“Buffy, I don’t think that I can-” Jenny raises her arms, atrophied from months of near-starvation and already trembling, to demonstrate. A steely determination settles on Buffy’s features.

“Then I’ll lower you down.”

“Are you certain?” This is madness, but she will do anything to escape this place. She realizes that she would rather tumble to shatter on the cobblestones below than return to the cell in which she has been slowly dying.

Buffy only nods once, tightly, before starting to wrap the rope around Jenny’s waist.

Fingers flying with a swiftness that speaks of experience (though how a gently-raised girl such as Buffy has acquired such skill is beyond her), Buffy soon has her secured as best as she can. Jenny flings a leg out the window frame, limbs aching as she maneuvers to brace herself against the outside wall. Buffy winches her toward the ground slowly but jerkily. Jenny can scarcely breathe the whole way down. The rope pinches at her sides, and the the terror that someone will walk by or look out a window and see them fills her chest.

Her legs can barely catch her weight when she at last hits the ground, and her fingers are trembling so much that she cannot untie herself. It dawns on her that she is trapped here, tied in place and helpless to flee if anyone should come along, and she begins to writhe in a panicked attempt to escape her bonds.

And then gentle voice is murmuring in her ear, and quick, clever hands are plucking at the knots that hold her captive. Willow pulls her into an embrace once she is freed, and only lets go when Buffy clambers down to stand beside them. Jenny blinks at the two of them, delirious with joy and disbelief. It is bitterly cold outside, far worse than inside the sugar house, but the air is clean and the stars are sharp above, and she must work hard to keep at bay the incredulous, hysterical laughter that threatens to burble up from some newly-warmed place deep within her chest.

They pick their way carefully through the streets. The late hour ensures that there is nobody about to observe them, but Jenny’s legs are weakened from disuse and her feet bare and freezing on the icy stones. She must lean on Buffy several times during the journey, but at last they reach the riverside and come to a halt by a decrepit pier. There is a rowboat docked at its edge — and from it springs Faith, who waves them urgently aboard. Stumbling to do as instructed, Jenny feels a wave of relief wash over her to see that Faith is unharmed.

She is starting to remember why she held so steadfastly to her silence. The three girls that now surround her as the little boat lurches into the Hudson would be reason enough to endure anything.

Everything is explained to her during the crossing, Willow and Buffy sharing the most but Faith interjecting between labored breaths as she heaves at the oars. Buffy tells her of cutting her hair, tying it back, and going to work in a man’s uniform. Hired by the sugar house in this disguise near a month ago, she has been waiting for an opportunity to rescue Jenny since then. Wesley helped to coordinate the escape, while Willow tailored Buffy’s uniform to hide certain aspects of her physicality and Faith volunteered to row them all to safety in the aftermath.

Jenny is at a loss for words when the tale is finished. She can only think to ask, rather vaguely, what Buffy’s father thinks she has been doing for the past month. Buffy merely shrugs and tells her that he knows nothing of it. She has been staying with Wesley and Faith since the day after Jenny’s capture, when William’s men came by the Summers’ residence to question her. Her father’s reputation as a staunch loyalist kept the men from being too insistent in their interrogation, but, knowing that she would perhaps not be so fortunate the next time they came by, Buffy slipped from the house while her father slept and did not return. She reasons that his character is above reproach, and he will doubtless be safer without her. Now, she declares, she will go with Jenny. There is nothing left in the city for her anymore.

It occurs to Jenny that she does not even know where it is they are going (though wherever it is, she knows she will be fiercely glad, perhaps selfishly, of Buffy’s company). When she asks, Buffy only grins with greater excitement than before. They are going to Washington’s winter encampment in Morristown. Wesley has sent a letter ahead explaining the situation, and there lies their surest bet of sanctuary. Jenny almost laughs at the thought. She, the wife of a British officer, is going to seek shelter with the Continental Army.

After coming to terms with this, Jenny is left with but two questions. She can understand Buffy’s desire to seek her fortune elsewhere, she says, but why should Willow abandon her home and family? There is a moment of silence, and then, quietly, Willow says that her family has left. Her parents, after years of near-isolation, departed the city a week ago to join the sizable Jewish congregation in Philadelphia. Willow, deeply involved in the plot to free Jenny, decided to stay and see it through. Now, she will accompany the two of them to Washington’s encampment and see what good she can do there.

Jenny blinks at her for a moment, speechless. Willow allowed her family to leave her behind in order to save Jenny’s life. It is beyond fathoming. Both girls have been made near-orphans, all on her behalf. Jenny at last murmurs her condolences, and then, deeply and reverently, her thanks.

Buffy sees that she is overcome. Her palm shines with rope burn, but she takes Jenny’s good hand in her own and holds it tight.

There is yet one issue on her mind, however, and Jenny voices it as they near the shore.

“Buffy, how did you find me? How did you know that I was there, in that… that place?”

Buffy stares out over the water, avoiding her eyes. “Well, I was told.”

“By Wesley?”

“No,” she says reluctantly. “By your husband.”

Some emotion that she has no name for, some ecstatic mixture of joy and disbelief, strikes Jenny to the bone. This, she thinks, is what absolution must feel like. She swallows hard, trying to make room for words among the chaos that is her head. “Is he… Did he tell you…”

Buffy sense the question Jenny cannot speak and elaborates. “He came to me, after the soldiers left my house. He knew that I was his best chance of finding out the truth. I… I was angry, and I shouted at him for letting them take you away, for not caring enough for you. He didn’t say a word the whole time.”

“Buffy,” Jenny whispers, at a loss.

“I didn’t know what to do!” Anguish leaks into Buffy's tone. “You were gone, and I didn’t know what to do! I got reckless. Desperate. I asked him if he would help me get you out, or at least tell me where I could find you. I think he knew what I was. He knew that we were working together, that we were both spies. But he told me anyway.”

“Did he say anything else? Anything about me?” It is too much to hope for, she knows, but she cannot help but ask.

“No. After that, he just walked away,” Buffy says gently.

Jenny is silent for a moment. There is grief, welling up in her chest, but there is also hope. He did not abandon her, not fully. In the end, she simply leans in to pull both Buffy and Willow into her arms. They have risked everything for her, bringing about miracles that would make any saint jealous. She cannot have Rupert, not any longer. But she has these girls, and that will be enough. It must be.

Once they have reached New Jersey and dragged the boat safely ashore, Faith turns to Jenny.

“I’m sorry to ask this, but Wesley says he has to know. While you were in there, and they were asking you things, did you-”

“You know she didn’t,” Buffy says immediately, warning in her voice. “Leave her alone.”

“Back off, okay? You know that I need to ask.” Faith looks determined but somewhat apologetic when she faces Jenny again. “Did you tell anyone? Anything? About us, or about what we’ve learned?”

Jenny brushes her fingers across her temple, at the puckered scar there. Her wrist twinges. “No,” she tells her, and there is pride in her voice. “I never said a word.”

Faith nods once, impressed but accepting this as truth. She helps them to unload the supplies Wesley has left for them, and then clambers back into the boat to return to the city, where a life still awaits her.

And Jenny, Buffy, and Willow, who cannot say the same, set their eyes toward the road ahead.

 


	13. Shelter (1779-1780)

It is thirty miles to Morristown, and every one of them is agony.

Jenny has never been one for travelling — this is the first time she has left New York City since the war began. In her previous journeys, which were few and far between, she rode in a carriage or wagon. She has never marched a day in her life.

Yet now she slogs on foot for hours each day, on legs withered from disuse and shivering from the chill. The supplies Wesley provided them with included a cloak and shoes for Jenny, for which she is deeply grateful, but even these do not protect her from the bitter talons of the wind. This winter seems far colder than any she has ever seen, though perhaps it is because this is the first time she is experiencing one without a warm home to return to. In any case, the frigid conditions, thick snow, and icy roads combine to impede their progress further.

The trip takes them almost three days. Jenny tires easily, still weak and malnourished, and cannot keep pace with the girls. Buffy half-carries her for part of the day’s journey — she has gained a wiry strength during her employment at the prison — but this is proves difficult for both of them and an unsustainable means of travel. They are forced to spend their nights in barns, begging the charity of several New Jersey farmers. It seems the three of them are a pitiable-looking lot, for they are never turned away. Willow concocts a story to explain their predicament: Jenny is her aunt and Buffy her brother (for, strangely, she still dresses in men’s attire, though she has discarded the rest of her uniform), and they are all fleeing north after their farm was looted by one of the armies. Despite the fact that none of them look related, nobody puts this tale to question. The sight of so pale and wretched a figure as Jenny seems to occupy most of their fascination instead, though most are polite enough not to pry. (They are a different breed than the city denizens she knows so well, and for that she is grateful.)

On the second night after leaving the city, while they huddle in ragged blankets in the straw, Buffy makes a most unexpected pronouncement: she will not be joining the encampment as an asylum seeker, but as a soldier. She will dress as a man and she will fight, as she has longed to since the war began.

Jenny erupts in an immediate outcry. She pleads with Buffy, telling her of all the dangers she is unprepared to face, but Buffy calmly replies that she will train with the other men and  _ learn  _ how to face them. Jenny turns to Willow for support, but is met with silence. Willow’s gaze is worried, but she merely gives Buffy a sad smile and nods. Buffy accepts this with a grin, and then looks to Jenny. She is speechless. Buffy is capable; she knows this more than she knows anything on this earth. But to allow this girl, with her bright smile and bold step, to walk through lines of cannon fire and musket shot? It is too much to ask this, and Jenny knows her soul will surely break with the weight of it.

But she whispers to Buffy that she had better take care of herself, and pulls the girl close so that she will not see the tears leaking from her  eyes.

The next day, Buffy is the one to spot the the first of hundreds of the wooden cabins that make up the encampment. She quickens, calling behind to them with relief and excitement dancing in her voice. Though the day’s walk was long, Jenny finds enough spirit within herself to break into a trot as they approach.

Jenny is uncertain as to what kind of welcome she anticipates. She knows that Wesley has sent word ahead, and that this camp should be expecting her. But there is nobody to greet them when they arrive, and the only people they encounter are sullen men hauling wood and irritable women squatting over scrubbing boards. They wander the premises for half an hour, during which their excitement fades to uncertainty.

And then, suddenly, Buffy gives a strangled shout and sprints off through the snow. Jenny swings toward her, confused as to what could have prompted such an outburst. There is nothing of interest in sight, only a few snow-covered shrubs and a particularly sorry-looking soldier shuffling along. But then he turns his head, and the expression of joy that springs across his features brings him instantly into recognition.

Buffy and Willow both fly to Xander’s side, flinging their arms around him. Jenny hobbles over more slowly, but Xander embraces her once the girls have released him. The war has not been kind to him, she sees at once. One of his eyes is missing, covered by a rough eyepatch, and his once-clear face is pocked by smallpox scars. But his remaining eye shines as jubilantly as ever, and the scars do not keep his buoyant chatter at bay. There is a new strength to him now, and perhaps a bit of hardness, but his pure happiness in this moment brings back a bit of the boy she once knew him as.

Xander leads them to the officers’ huts, giving them a summary of his involvement in the war as they walk. He has fought in many battles during his three years of service, but he does not speak of them in much detail. None of them press him on this matter, though Willow looks at him with concern. Buffy bites her lip before informing him of her own plans to fight. He is hesitant, at first, but ultimately does not object. Then the subject turns to his missing eye, and Jenny is barely surprised to learn that he lost it at Monmouth, the same place her husband nearly met his end. The thought brings with it a rush of sorrow, and she is glad when Xander finally knocks comes to the next row of cabins and knocks upon one of their doors. 

The first officer they encounter does not know what to make of them, so he sends them three doors down to speak to a man named Hamilton. This officer proves to be far more competent; upon Jenny’s introduction, he immediately procures Wesley’s letter and asks that she verify her story, just for the sake of caution. Jenny is swaying and nearly dead on her feet, but she braces herself against his desk and somehow, from a within the very depths of herself, manages to scrape out everything she can remember of the last year’s events. The man looks at her with something akin to respect when she has finished and, with a tight nod of approval, he directs them to yet another cabin. As she steps from his abode, she glances back and sees that he has returned to what seems to be thousands of pages of writings scattered across his desk.

The hut they have been sent to turns out to belong to a quartermaster of sorts. He seems unimpressed with the lot of them, but fetches a map of the encampment and points out where their lodgings will be. When they each must give their name to be listed for rations, she falters.

“Jenny Calendar,” she says at last. The man merely grunts, writes this down, and sends them on their way to a new beginning.

Life in the camp proves to be beyond difficult, but is still such an improvement on the sugar house that Jenny cannot be anything but glad to be there.

Rations are limited, for the amount of snow on the roads makes transportation of goods nearly impossible. Some days they receive but a mouthful of bread. Most men are poorly-clothed, and nearly all seem desperately unhappy. Jenny hears one woman remark that the snow is perhaps a blessing in disguise, for it keeps the men from deserting the encampment just as surely as it keeps supplies from entering.

On their second day there, a snowstorm drops six feet of snow upon them and traps them in the shelter the she and Willow share with ten other women (Buffy, under the name of Elias Summers, stays in a hut with other soldiers). There is but one door to their cabin, and the snow outside is piled so thick that it will not budge. It is a distressing circumstance, one alleviated a few hours later when a group of put-upon soldiers dig them out, but in the meantime they are given the chance to speak further with some of their roommates. Most of them are friendly enough, if a bit abrupt, but a very sweet girl by the name of Tara is quite happy to chat with them the entire time that they are imprisoned. Willow in particular seems to take a liking to her, which Jenny approves of. At times such as these, it is best to have all the friends that one can.

The weather only worsens as the season wears on, and everyone she meets seems in agreement that this truly is the worst winter anyone has ever seen. Food becomes even scarcer, and they are occasionally forced to go without eating for days at a time. Still, Xander tells her this year’s encampment is far less terrible than the one he endured at Valley Forge. The army had consisted mainly of new recruits at that time, and their inexperience in creating shelters and fending off the cold cost many of them their lives. Xander says that he was fortunate enough to get away with losing only a few toes to frostbite. While they sit around the fire, he tugs off a boot and wiggles the three that remain.

Jenny worries about losing digits of her own as she works at the washing board. Women who remain with the camp are expected to work if they are to earn rations, and rehabilitated spies are no exception. Her hands crack and bleed from the cold, and the bitter soap makes them sting all the more. But worst is her wrist, which has never been quite the same since the sugar house. It pains her greatly each time she sets to work scrubbing at laundry, but she has no choice but to labor this way through all of January until Tara — blessed Tara — suggests to her another way to earn her keep.

The camp hospital, when she first enters, makes her want to retch. Most of the men inside are sick rather than injured, coughing and shivering in their cots. The smell of them is similar enough to that of the sugar house that it halts her at the door, and she must push away the flood of hideous images and sensations this evokes before she can proceed further. 

Tara has told Jenny and Willow of the great need for nurses within the army, and they have agreed to abandon their unpromising careers as laundresses to serve in this new role. Carefully, Tara shows them how to clean the patients and change their linens, and then explains how they will be responsible for clearing chamber pots, sweeping out the hospital, and reporting to the ward’s matron and surgeons when required. It seems somewhat morbid and tiresome work, but Jenny is simply glad to give her bleeding hands a rest. The pay is poor, but there is still a strange sort of joy that comes with working hard and having money pressed into your hand that is  _ your own _ , not your husband or father’s.

Though at first she cannot help the revulsion she feels at the sight of the ill and incontinent soldiers, she eventually finds that caring for them brings her something like peace. In the sugar house, she was confronted every day with suffering — her own and others’ — that she was helpless to prevent. Now, knowing that she can ease the pain of these men is comforting (and brings her far more of a sense of purpose than laundry ever did). She and Willow make fine nurses. Both survived smallpox as children, and have nothing to fear from infected prisoners. Willow has a particular knack for identifying illnesses, and Jenny has spent enough time around corpses, vomit, and rot to be largely unperturbed when faced them.

Buffy also excels in her position. The soldiers train as best they can through the snowstorms and their own hunger, and Buffy proves to be talented with both musket and bayonet. She visits them at their hut on occasion to tell them of her latest achievements, and is always happy to boast when she out-performs Xander during their drills. Jenny is proud, and helps her to tease Xander at every opportunity, but still spends her nights wracked with worry.

In February, Washington throws a ball exclusively for his first officers while his half-starved and half-naked soldiers shiver in their huts. Bitterness seeps across the camp as distant strains of fife and fiddle emerge from the direction of the dancing hall, and Jenny finds herself disgusted by the whole affair. Washington is a legend, it is true. It is also said that he is a fine and honorable man. But as she sits in her miserable hut and envisions the gaiety of the revelries, she cannot help but work herself into a bit of a fury. She risked everything for this man in her first act as a spy — for the revolution itself, really, but Washington in particular. And in the end, he has proven himself to be somewhat less than the saint she expected. She doesn’t know if she is angrier at herself for holding onto such a foolish fantasy or at the general for failing to live up to it. 

Even Willow does not defend him in this instance. Gone are the days of her unwavering faith  — left behind in the city, perhaps, or carried away when her parents departed. Now she speaks of his Virginia plantation and the slaves he owns, her brow troubled as they sprinkle the hospital floors with vinegar. But Willow is strong of spirit, even without her old idealism, and she still has faith in the goals of the war, if not its figurehead. She works hard, suffers in silence, and shows herself to be as brave as Buffy in nearly all respects — and that is the highest compliment that Jenny can imagine.

Caring for the sick is no easy task, and such work consumes much of her energy and concentration. But there are still moments within each day where her mind wanders along the New Jersey plains and across the Hudson, back to New York City and all she has left behind. She thinks of Rupert, and wonders if his life is much the same as it always was. He must still sit around his war table and plot the downfall of the very men in whose midst she now abides, which is a strange matter to consider. It is even possible that he is preparing to be sent back into the field, though she desperately hopes this is not the case. Enough people she cares about will be on the battlefield soon enough, and even after all that has happened, she would never wish any harm upon him. In the quiet of the night, when she cannot drop off to sleep despite the exhaustion aching in her limbs, she wonders if he ever casts his his own thoughts toward her. Of course, it is unlikely that he has any idea of her whereabouts, though he must have been told of her escape from the sugar house. He may even think her dead. (She does wish for him to grieve for her, but she is simultaneously terrified that he does not.)

As such thoughts cross her mind, it is easy for sorrow to ebb in. But, when all is said and done, she cannot bring herself to regret the actions that have brought her to this point. She has done what she has in pursuit of something larger than herself, and that is something she will always be proud of despite the hardships it has brought her. And her current situation is not so terrible as it could be.

It is a strange and somewhat brutal way of life they live, but they find their happiness in it all the same. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> George Washington really did throw a big party during the winter of 1779-1780 and everyone that wasn't invited really was pissed about it. Probably because they were starving and freezing to death. And Alexander Hamilton was at the Morristown encampment at this time, serving an aide-de-camp for Washington. In fact, Morristown is where he began courting a certain Elizabeth Schuyler.


	14. Gone (1780-1781)

Spring comes slowly, but still it comes.

It is mid-March when the storms at last let up, and April before all the snow is gone from the ground. While the weather improves, spirits within the camp rise higher than Jenny has ever seen. Smiles come easier to everyone’s lips as supplies come easier into the beleaguered camp. The once-steady supply of frostbite victims in their ward dwindles down to nothing.

But the banishment of winter brings with it an end to the brief lull in the fighting. The soldiers train harder than ever, turning the parade grounds into a stew of muck. Buffy returns from their exercises each day exhausted and spattered in mud, but excitement still gleams in her eyes when she speaks of the coming battles that they prepare for.

Her visits grow rarer as her drills stretch far into the evening, but Jenny cherishes what time she has with the girl. She realizes now that Buffy has been here for her more than anyone these past five years, as a pupil and comrade, confidant and friend. Buffy is a familiar face in a time of great shiftings — for how their world has swung about these past months — and Jenny is grateful for this with an intensity that is beyond words. Instead, she simply lets Buffy lean against her each time she stops by (never minding the mud) and hopes that she knows.

The Marquis de Lafayette arrives in camp in early May among much pomp and circumstance, bringing with him the best of news: the French are sending six thousand men to join in the fight. Jenny is as delighted by this as everyone else, but there is an undercurrent of worry to her jubilation. The war is truly roaring into being again, and Buffy will be on its front lines. She feels a twinge of guilt when she realizes that the same can be said for Xander, but that is indeed an entirely different matter. Xander knows warfare; he has fought before and lived to tell the tale. And Buffy is _Buffy_. Bright, quick, and fiery, to be certain, but possessing an eagerness untempered by experience. She is eager for her first taste of battle — and she receives it all too soon.

Rumors of British advance on Morristown spread through the encampment during the first days of June, and Washington begins to assemble troops in answer. Terror of a kind she has not known since the sugar house seizes in Jenny’s chest when Buffy, triumph and elation in her every bounding stride, flies into the hospital and tells her that she is going off to fight with them.

Jenny knows that there is nothing she can say that will turn her from this, not now. So she simply pulls Buffy into a long, fierce embrace. She does not cry, for it would do no good for Buffy to see her in such a state. Instead, she squeezes her eyes shut and murmurs a silent prayer to whoever may be listening. She has no trust in God, not any longer, but she will make any plea if it will keep Buffy from harm.

The entire camp prepares to depart along with the soldiers. It is not a difficult task for most of them, as their meager possessions can easily be bundled and carried away. The huts they leave where they lie. The farmers whose land they are built upon will surely be glad of the extra timber and nails, and it saves those departing the trouble of tearing them down. As she ties up her belongings in a blanket and walks out of her hut for the last time, Jenny cannot quite decided how to feel about leaving this place. Morristown is a far cry from the home she shared with Rupert for all those years, but it was a welcome sanctuary after the horrors of the sugar house. Life here has not been easy, but it has not been intolerable — so if it isn’t quite regret with which she departs, it is something close.

Washington has the troops depart early in the morning, while dawn is just barely stretching above the mountaintops. Jenny and the other women bring up the rear of the procession, but she watches from the edge of the parade grounds as the soldiers form their ranks and begin their journey into the countryside.

It is but the first of many marches that will come that year. Each is grueling, but Jenny has regained her strength since her arrival at Morristown and manages them far better than the one she undertook in December. At the end of each trek, Jenny’s work is not done — she and the other nurses must help assemble temporary hospitals and tend to those who have wounded or exhausted themselves during the journey. However, these are mere trifles compared to the injuries they are soon to face.

Their regiment sees its first action toward the end of the month, in Springfield. The soldiers march on ahead to battle, leaving the women and the infirm behind at the camp. Jenny does not have the chance to bid Buffy farewell before she goes off to battle, as the men are summoned rather abruptly to form their ranks. She dashes from the hospital when she hears news of their departure, but arrives too late — all she can do is wave desperately as, locked in step beside her fellow soldiers, Buffy recedes across the hilltops.

Musket fire rattles for hours in the distance.Though they are yet miles away from the fighting, this is the first time Jenny has heard a battle raging in such close proximity since the British took New York City. Despite the intervening years, she feels just as helpless now as then — though at least this time she has Willow and Tara to share her worries. The two of them are rarely apart these days, and she often catches sight of them with hands clasped together, silently offering comfort. On this day, however, even that is not enough. The three of them remain in a state of vigilant tenseness, bustling about the makeshift hospital to brace for the inevitable flood of patients.

The sound of shooting only stops after nightfall, and it is another hour yet before the men return. Jenny would like to be among the wives waiting at the edge of camp for their husbands to return, straining to catch a glimpse of Buffy and Xander, but her duties keep her occupied in the hospital. Broken, bleeding men are being hauled in faster than she can tend to them. A coppery miasma permeates the air, and the moaning from the injured and dying seems to fill the shabby structure to its very seams. This is far worse than anything she faced in the hospital at Morristown, but she grits her teeth and works through the night to soothe and bandage and clean.

All the while, she sees no sign of Buffy. She not among the injured, but Jenny knows not whether this means she is safe from harm or beyond it forever. It is long past midnight before she is allowed to stumble away from the carnage in the hospital, exhausted but determined to seek out Buffy and Xander. She first investigates their tents, but finds no sign that either has returned there since morning. This only exacerbates her fears. She does not wish to ask around camp after their whereabouts — Buffy, to preserve her disguise, cannot have any undue attention directed toward her — but Jenny is just beginning to think she has no other choice when she catches sight of the two of them emerging from the trees nearby.

Jenny flies to them at once, pulling both into her arms and holding on tightly. At first Buffy is still as stone, but then she snaps back to life and clutches onto Jenny with a strength that is almost painful. She sobs once, low and quiet, into Jenny’s shoulder. Xander steps back to give them room, looking grim and almost regretful. Buffy gives herself one moment, and then two, to fall apart. And then she pulls away, gently but firmly, and manages a pained smile. Jenny feels her heart break at that look, at the realization that what remained of Buffy’s innocence was left behind on the bloodsoaked plains of Springfield.

It takes months for Buffy to return to something like her old self — and even then, she is a little quieter, a little harder. But she begins to smile again, and even laughs at Xander’s antics on occasion. Jenny cannot help but compare her to the girl she first knew. That Buffy had been softer, lighter, and perhaps a bit gentler — but she still possessed the same spirit as the Buffy that stands beside her now. (That spirit has gotten the both of them into and out of many scrapes over the past five years.) Jenny knows that she herself has also changed, in many of the same ways. It is simply the way of war.

As July bleeds into August and then summer into autumn, the army makes its way inexorably southward. Charleston has fallen (Jenny cannot help but be disappointed, after all she suffered in attempting to prevent this), and it seems most major operations in the war are now being carried out in the southern colonies. This seems to make Tara nervous. Her family is from the south, she tells them. Though they are not on amiable terms, for reasons she seems unwilling to discuss, she still fears for their safety.

Of course, there are many more battles and skirmishes throughout their travels. Buffy learns to cope with the bodies crumpling around her and the peculiar resistance flesh provides to a jabbing bayonet. Jenny learns to cope with the ever-present bloodstains that have seeped into the creases in her hands and the notion that someone she loves may march out in the morning and never return.

(Except neither of them do, not really.)

Sometimes, the two of them will spend an hour just sitting together in silence, too weary of toil and the world itself to even speak — though having the other there brings comfort all the same.

News of Benedict Arnold’s betrayal comes in October, but this serves to rouse the troops rather than discourage them. They rail against the damned traitor and promise to blow the British clear off the continent just to spite him. Buffy joins in their righteous fury with a particularly impassioned outburst that leaves the others roaring in agreement. She flushes with pride, despite the unusual amount of attention this has brought her, and the grin she gives Jenny is wondrously bright.

After a few minor engagements in the fall, the troops are obliged to find quarters for the winter, despite the lack of snow present. It is the first warm winter that she has ever experienced, and she can tell that Xander, Buffy, and Willow also find it pleasant, if somewhat unnerving. There is no single gathering of all the Continental troops this time; instead, Washington splinters them into different regional camps.

As Jenny begins her second winter with the Continental Army, she realizes that it has been more than a year since she fled the city, and even longer since she last saw her husband. She thinks of him with a flash of pain that is rawer than it should be, considering the time that has passed since their last meeting. She can still recall the look on his face as he turned away from her, the betrayal and pain running together as one under his features. But she also remembers the role (however slight) that he played in her rescue, and somehow manages to draw hope from uncertainty.

This winter is pleasanter by far than the one they survived in Morristown, and she treats not a single case of frostbite the entire season. Their lodgings are less permanent, however, and their reprieve shorter: they are forced to move about the southern colonies several times under the discretion of General Greene, and are back to fighting again in mid-January.

Cowpens is a particularly nasty battle, involving many more troops and many more casualties than any they have experienced before. Xander emerges with a musket ball lodged in his thigh, and he takes Jenny’s hand and squeezes it hard as the surgeon plucks the bullet out.

He can barely keep his feet as the soldiers begin their trek up to Virginia, but Xander has no choice but to grit his teeth and bind his bandages tighter: Cornwallis is hot on their heels, and they will spend the next month leading him in a merry chase throughout Virginia and the Carolinas. He will catch them, it is sure; what remains to be seen is when and where. General Greene certainly has some sort of plan, but the rest of them are left in the dark.

They are in North Carolina, camped near an old courthouse, when the day finally comes. They do not flee when news of the incoming British forces reaches them. Instead, they are ordered to prepare for battle. The Continental forces hold a favorable position upon a ridge, the March sky is a pale blue expanse unblemished by a single cloud, and what will soon be the killing field stretches wide and open before them. It seems as good a day as any to take a stand.

This time, Jenny is closer than usual to the fighting. The nurses and doctors have assembled a field hospital of sorts right in the grassy area behind the courthouse, where injured men can quickly be transported from the site of the battle. The musket fire rages so nearby that the sound is nearly deafening, and they can hear the screams that accompany each volley. Scores of men are dragged over to them, until blood mats the grass that leads to their makeshift hospital. Dozens of men are dying around her, letting out guttural cries and outright shrieks as they writhe and tremble. Jenny begins to detach herself from everything, setting her body to go mechanically about its work of bandaging, cleaning, and stepping away from those who are past saving. It makes everything easier when she takes her mind away.

She barely turns her eyes the face of each patient she tends to. It is because of this that Jenny almost misses that familiar profile. She even begins to turn away, judging from the great pulse of blood from beneath the boy’s breastbone that this soldier is beyond any aid that she can provide — but he reaches out one trembling hand and latches onto her skirt. Then Jenny looks. Then Jenny sees.

Buffy is lying on the grass before her. Buffy is dying on the grass before her. Jenny is frozen for one terrible, crucial moment. And then she is on her knees, her hands slick with blood as she presses fistfuls of bandages to the ragged hole in Buffy’s chest. They are soaked through all too quickly, red seeping out of them to stain Jenny’s shirtsleeves, and Buffy is convulsing in her arms, her eyes growing distant, and this isn’t real, this is worse than leaving Rupert or living through the sugar house or anything, _anything_ , in her life—

Buffy manages to bring herself back into focus for a moment, but she is fighting some terrible force that is pulling her under. She smiles, once, and Jenny knows that it is for her. Nothing makes sense, and she only dimly realizes that these may well be the last moments she has with Buffy. She should say something, comfort her, _say something_.

“Buffy,” she begins, her voice shaking. “Buffy, I—”

But Buffy merely shudders once and is gone.


	15. Ghost (1781)

Buffy is buried in a trench with the other fallen soldiers.

The entire battle lasted ninety minutes. Ninety minutes, and they have seventy-odd corpses piled in a ditch. Jenny stays with Buffy until everything is over, until the soldiers gathering up the dead come and try to take her away. Jenny holds tight to Buffy’s arm for a moment, fighting the urge to scream at them, to tell them that they can’t take her, because Buffy is — was, oh God — bright and bold and deserving of so much more than an anonymous battlefield grave. But there is no other choice. Jenny brushes a stray lock of hair behind Buffy’s ear, adjusts her collar, and let’s her go.

Something in Jenny gives at that moment, as she watches Buffy being borne away — some essential piece of her falls away and never returns.

It should be agony, breaking the news to Willow and Xander, but Jenny feels nothing at all. This is worse than the numbness that set in at the sugar house. She stares blankly into space as she tells them what has transpired, unshaken Willow’s horrible, keening cries and Xander’s hollow-eyed horror. She feels vaguely that she should go to them, should bring them into her arms and sob into their shoulders, but such actions are completely beyond her. Instead, she turns on her heel and lets her feet carry her to the hospital, where there is work to be done that requires neither thought nor tears.

This is how she will spend the next seven months.

She speaks rarely to anyone, aside from accepting orders from the hospital matron. Willow attempts to make conversation upon occasion, but Jenny can rarely muster more than a perfunctory response. Some vital spark has gone out of her, and she drifts through a bleak and greyish haze. She is unattached and uncaring, impassive as time wanders by. Nothing in the world matters as it used to, and she cannot even bring herself to care about her consuming indifference.

It is difficult to tell how Willow and Xander are coping, as they exist only in her periphery, but some idea of their condition manages to register. Tara seems to serve as Willow’s lifeline. They are inseparable, sharing a tent and working side by side in the hospital — Tara is always within reach, and Willow clings to her gladly. In her care, Willow talks of Buffy, of all that she loved about her friend, and cleanses herself with mourning.

Xander does not fare nearly so well: he adopts his own sort of aloofness, one motivated by anger more than apathy. He grows wild. Reckless. Each time he returns from battle, he bears more wounds in his flesh and more fury in his breast. Willow tries desperately to reach him, to instill in him some sense of self-preservation, but he resists her every attempt. He courts death, and she proves a sly mistress for several months before giving in to his wishes. In September, he is blown to pieces by cannon fire at Eutaw Springs, and that is that.

Willow spends the night howling in grief, but Jenny simply slips deeper into her perpetual state of detachment.

She moves about camp as a ghost, cold and lifeless and drifting. Men in the wards begin to fear receiving treatment from her. She is an ill omen, they say, and her touch will do them more harm than good. It is only the hospital’s desperate need of nurses that allows her to remain employed there. As it is, she does not blame those that think her to be cursed. She can almost believe it herself.

All the while, the war rages on. She feels as though she is trapped in the eye of a hurricane, still and silent as chaos whirls around her. The skirmishes blur together into one endless nightmare of distant explosions and blood staining her hands. She does not know how much time has passed since that day at the courthouse, and pays no attention to where they have wandered since. Time and location are unimportant.

At last, one day, Willow manages to impress upon her that they are now marching through Virginia. Not even a month has passed since Xander’s death, and Willow’s wears her heartbreak in the set of her shoulders and the circles under her eyes. Despite this, she seems almost excited as she tries to describe their destination: they are going to Yorktown, where a great reckoning apparently awaits the besieged British.

When they arrive, they come upon a sight that manages to take even Jenny’s breath away. Eighteen thousand troops mill about outside the city, more soldiers that she has ever before seen in one place. Willow tells her that the British have barely half as many men holding their position, and that the arrival of reinforcements is unlikely. Against all odds, the bulk of the British force has been backed into a corner.

The soldiers spend the first weeks outside the city digging trenches and hauling cannons into place. It is well into October when the fighting begins in earnest, but it is ferocious even despite the sheer advantage of manpower that the Continental forces hold. Washington orders barrage after barrage of artillery fire on Yorktown, reducing both British defenses and the city itself to rubble. Slowly but surely, they shrink back into the city, desperate to maintain their tenuous foothold.

Jenny watches all of this transpire and still cannot summon even a smile. She is aware of  the fact that they are engaged in a monumental endeavor, one that will change the fate of the country, but to her it is only that: a fact. A simple statement, lacking immediacy or emotion.

Injured men flow ceaselessly into Jenny’s field hospital, especially after a particularly bloody strike against the British redoubts. She is so occupied with her duties that it would be difficult to keep abreast of specific occurrences in the battle even if she were paying them any heed. Indeed, she does not even hear of the British surrender until a full day after they send out their drummer boy and white flag.

The negotiations themselves take days, despite how hopeless the British must know their situation to be. In the end, they are forced to march from the city without being afforded any honors of war: their flags will be furled, their bayonets sheathed, and their bands will not be allowed to play their typical tribute. Jenny joins with the mass of onlooking Continental soldiers and camp women that line the route that the vanquished troops take to exit the city. They proceed slowly, some drunkenly weaving and others weeping openly, but she can muster no pity for them. She knows that she should be feeling some sense of satisfaction, at least, or perhaps outright jubilation, but her heart is as empty as ever.

And then she sees him. He is perched on a bay horse, his uniform somewhat tinged with dirt from the march but his posture unbent and steady. It is the expression on his face that sets him apart from the other officers he rides with, however. Rupert carries no trace of their embarrassment or steely outrage — instead, he looks about with faint puzzlement. There is an unspoken question in his eyes:  _ What comes next? _

She simply stares at him. It is unbelievable, and unfair, and perhaps some kind of miracle. And despite the months of broken silence, despite her resignation to living the rest of her days as the ghost she has become, something stirs within her. Not love, certainly. Not even happiness. She does not have the words for it, but perhaps  _ longing _ comes the closest.

And because Rupert is not staring forlornly at the ground or bitterly toward the horizon, he catches sight of her. She wonders at first if he will even recognize her, dressed in stained rags and hollowed out by hard labor and sorrow. But his expression changes, the polite bemusement slipping away to shock and something akin to wonder. Their eyes lock, and everything else falls away. The years, the betrayal, the victories, the losses, the marching soldiers and elated spectators.

Jenny is struck with the urge to run to him, to push through the crowds and haul herself up behind him so that they may ride off together. Rupert looks as though he is almost expecting her to do so — he draws up on the reigns for a moment, causing his horse to falter and the officers behind him to pause as well. But Jenny does not move. Cannot move. The moment has passed, and she remembers how impossible everything has become.

Perhaps Rupert has a similar revelation, or perhaps he decides that he is mistaken in his belief of her identity, for he tears his eyes away and urges his horse forward again. Jenny watches as he presses onward with his soldiers, disappearing once more from her life. 

Except this time — just as they round the bend and disappear from view — this time, he turns and looks back.


	16. Familiar (1781-1784)

It is difficult to adjust to a life without the war.

It is not over, not truly — though there are no more great clashes of the opposing armies, minor encounters and skirmishes will continue over the next year and a half. But Jenny has no part in these.

After Yorktown, Willow and Tara decide that they have had enough. “We’ve seen it through,” Willow tells her. “It’s only a matter of time before both sides make peace. And we deserve that too. Peace.”

They invite Jenny to come with them. Having nothing better to do, she accepts. It makes no difference to her where she goes, and the two girls seem happy enough to have her along. Perhaps, she thinks vaguely, it will be a relief to escape the blood and death. As they are not enlisted soldiers, they are not bound to stay. They need only declare their departure to the hospital matron (who accepts the news with some complaint) before they trudge off down the same path that Rupert and his soldiers marched along mere days ago.

Jenny finds that she is unaccustomed to being surrounded by empty countryside rather than noisy, bustling mobs of men. She has trouble sleeping the first few nights, unused to the persistent silence. Willow and Tara chatter back and forth as they walk, discussing plans for the future and deciding upon their eventual destination (they agree that they will go north, for their time in the southern colonies has brought them nothing but tragedy), but the murmur of two voices is nothing like the swell of dozens that she has become accustomed to over the past two years.

Her relative solitude is both a blessing and a curse. She has not thought much about anything at all since Buffy’s death, working herself to exhaustion every day for the express purpose of keeping her mind blank. Now, there is nothing to do but think and remember. She resists as best as she can, but it becomes more difficult as they travel farther north and the landscape becomes achingly familiar. Memories flood in inexorably. The musty smell of the Morristown cabins. The bite of winter upon her cracked and bleeding hands. The little boat that carried her across the Hudson, Faith tugging hard at its oars. Willow embracing her in the street outside the sugar house. Xander wiggling his remaining toes above the fire. Buffy in her soldier’s uniform, breathless after a hard morning of practicing with her bayonet. Buffy in the garden of the Summers’ residence, whispering secrets in her ear. Buffy bleeding in the grass. Buffy smiling up at her, brazen and reckless and  _ gone _ .

Willow and Tara wake to find her weeping one night, overwhelmed by her recollections. It is the first time she has cried since the battle that took Buffy’s life. They are at her side in an instant, sandwiching her in between them in a single embrace. Not a word is spoken. They simply hold each other in silence until dawn scrapes over the horizon.

In the end, they settle down just outside Philadelphia. Pennsylvania is perhaps the most open-minded of the states, offering Willow and Tara their best chance at a life together. It was not merely their friendship that allowed them to survive the war unbroken, Jenny has come to realize. It was their love, their unwavering loyalty and support for each other, that kept them from falling into despair as she did. Jenny has always known Willow to be remarkably brave and intelligent, but she has come to appreciate Tara even more during the journey. Tara has a diffident temperament, yes, but possesses a quiet intensity of spirit that does not falter. Jenny thinks them to be two of the kindest and strongest people she has ever known, and wishes them every happiness.

Willow finds them work with a sharp-tongued local seamstress, Cordelia Chase. She is bitingly sarcastic at times, but they quickly discover her to be a warm and compassionate soul: she welcomes them with open arms when she catches wind of their circumstances. Her father, a once-wealthy merchant, apparently lost his fortune during the war, and it appears that Cordelia is unwilling to let them suffer the impoverishment and uncertainty she once endured, especially considering everything else they have survived. Of course, she cheerfully calls them insane for seeking out involvement in the war in the first place. Jenny feels a twinge of hurt, thinking of how Buffy would angrily fire off some retort. The two of them would enjoy each other’s company, she thinks. Or at least enjoy insulting each other.

Tara has passable ability with a needle and thread, so Cordelia recruits her as well. Jenny, however, is even more hopeless at sewing than she is at cooking. Cordelia puts her in charge of the books, telling her to keep track of various customers’ orders and measurements. Jenny realizes, bizarrely, that this work it is her first time using a quill and parchment in as long as she can remember. Even if she’d had time to write letters in the war, she never had anyone to send them to.

With their combined efforts and Cordelia’s kindness, they manage to provide from themselves. Their lodgings are cramped, with all three of them living together, and they can afford few luxuries, but it is a more comfortable existence than any of them have known in years. There is no more blood on Jenny’s hands, no more hunger snarling in her gut. Slowly, she even learns to smile again. The pain is still there, and on occasion it looms so darkly overhead that it blocks out the light in her life. But these times are becoming less frequent, and Willow and Tara are always there for her when they do arise.

She stays and mends for three years. Peace comes, on paper and in practice, in 1784. The country must now begin the process of repairing itself and deciding its future.

The anniversary of the courthouse battle is always a difficult day. Dread creeps up on Jenny as winter melts down into dregs during the first days of March, always pouncing on the ides.

This year, as the date approaches, Jenny makes up her mind. There is one aspect of Buffy’s death she has been hiding from all these years, and she knows the time has come to confront it.

She tells Willow and Tara of her plan in early February. They do not try to argue with her; indeed, they seem to believe this journey will be good for her. The two of them have plans for an expedition of their own: after practically living in their backyard all this time, they are at last going to visit Willow’s family in Philadelphia and tell them everything.

So, with Willow and Tara’s approval (and Cordelia’s instructions to pick up some fine New York embroidery thread along the way), Jenny sets off to confess to Hank Summers how exactly his precious daughter came to be buried in some godforsaken ditch in North Carolina.

The journey is a fretful one. Willow sent Mr. Summers a letter three years ago to inform him of what happened, but they have never received a response or any sort of indication that he is aware of his daughter’s fate. Jenny has no way of predicting exactly how he will react, but she is certain that she will be the one that he blames. (Truly, she cannot fault him for this. The same thought has occurred to her many times on her worst days.)

However, this is not the only reason she feels a shiver of uncertainty come across her when she catches sight of the outskirts of New York City. Five years. It has been nearly five years since she was dragged from her home. Five years since she escaped across the Hudson, never to return. Except  _ never _ has suddenly become  _ now _ .

It is bewildering. Somehow, nothing has different — yet at the same time, everything is. The buildings are in their old places, but their facades seem less inviting, less familiar. Perhaps it is because the war has changed this city, wearing it down to a colder, harsher version of its past self. Perhaps it is because the same has happened to her.

When she arrives in the city proper, she has no idea where to begin. Her first thought is to go directly the Summers’ house — but there are so many memories condensed in that location, not to mention the house across the street, and she is already so overwhelmed by simply being  _ here _ again. Instead, she begins a roundabout tour of the city, retracing the steps she once knew so well. She visits the harbor, where a few old warships remain. She walks through the market where she once did her shopping. She even forces herself to pass by the sugar house, though even the sight of the place makes her feel ill. From out here, is difficult to imagine the horrors that occurred within. She has forgotten how innocent it looks from its exterior, how placid.

As she turns away, still slightly sickened, she considers where she can next set her feet to wandering. It comes to her at once: Faith and Wesley. She briefly contemplates if it is safe to visit them, for they may still reside in a house of secrets, but then banishes the thought. The war has ended. Surely their secrecy has met the same fate.

Still, she cannot help but feel slightly tense as she treads the back streets that lead to the dry goods store, passing along the way the abandoned tailor’s shop that Willow’s family once owned. Her every visit to Wesley’s home has been a furtive affair, and somehow this feels as if it is no exception. It occurs to her that it is entirely possible that they have moved on after the war, and may not even live in the city any longer. But Faith is answers when Jenny raps on the door, and her shout of excitement is so genuine that Jenny’s remaining doubts vanish. Wesley also appears quite pleased to see her. She can tell that he has lost friends in the war; he bears the same haunted look that she has come to recognize in herself. He takes heart at her arrival, however, and Jenny knows that he is happy to see that she has survived.

He has gone somewhat grey around the temples, she notices as well. And Faith — she has grown into an adult. She does not notice these changes in Willow and Tara, as they have been around each other so constantly that the accumulated differences in their appearances and actions are imperceptible. But comparing the Faith before her to the one that rowed her to safety five years ago is another story entirely. Achingly, she thinks of Buffy. She and Faith were the same age. They would both be twenty-five now. She starts to wonder if Faith would still be taller, and would still tease Buffy about this fact as she once did, but stops herself before sorrow can overwhelm her.

Wesley insists on having her over for dinner. Faith sets down stew and bread, and the three of them swap stories of the last half-decade. Faith and Wesley were kept busy avoiding the clutches of Benedict Arnold during the war, but admirably continued their intelligence operations all the while. Faith cheerfully calls Arnold every dirty name she can think of, making Wesley roll his eyes heavenward and Jenny smile, and then launches into a particularly riveting tale about the capture of one of his operatives.

“We got him in the end,” she concludes, a fierce pride in her voice, “and William Pratt wasn’t half so smug with a noose around his neck.”

Jenny twitches in surprise, and a familiar pain spikes through her wrist. (Even after all this time, it has never healed properly.) She does not know precisely how to feel about this news. “Good,” she tells Faith, and leaves it at that.

She relates her own tale in more subdued tones, particularly when describing tragedy. Wesley looks at her with grave sympathy when she has finished, while Faith works to hide the grief that fell across her face when Jenny broke the news of Buffy’s death.

Finally, Jenny reveals the purpose of her pilgrimage to the city. Her hosts both adopt pained expressions, and suddenly she is again wracked by worry. Gently, Wesley explains to her that Hank Summers is gone. After escaping unscathed from British suspicion and interrogation, he publicly denounced his daughter and America itself before turning tail and fleeing to England. Jenny feels a great rush of hatred toward the man, and finds herself furious that he is so far across that sea that she cannot immediately hunt him down and kill him herself. (Judging from Faith’s scowl at the very mention of his name, Jenny suspects that she would eagerly assist her in this endeavor.)

The premise of her visit is now meaningless: Hank Summers doesn’t deserve hear of Buffy’s fate, and most likely wouldn’t care to in the first place. Strangely, she does not feel as though her burden has been lifted. She came to the city to make amends and put things right, and now that this opportunity to do so has been snatched from her, she feels even more agitated.

Faith and Wesley gladly offer to put her up for the night. Exhausted from her travels, Jenny cannot refuse and gratefully tumbles into sleep the moment she lies down on their spare bed. In the morning, she awakens before either of them. The same restlessness that drove her to the city in the first place compels her to dress quietly and slip out into the street before the morning mists have even begun to dissipate.

She knows that there is nobody left in the Summers’ home, but that is where she finds herself drawn nevertheless. The little garden is somewhat overgrown, but otherwise just as she remembers it. And the house itself, of course, is exactly the same. As she peers at one of its windows, she half-expects to see Buffy’s silhouette sweep by. Standing here, staring up at the empty old house, she feels at a loss. There is nothing for her. Not in this house.

When she turns, it is with all the inevitability of a pendulum swinging back to its center. Across the street is the home that once belonged to her, to  _ them _ . Now it belongs only to him, or perhaps to some stranger. After all, it is unlikely that he has remained here after the war’s outcome was decided. Wesley and Faith made no mention of what became of Rupert, and she did not ask.

Perhaps she always knew that she would find herself here.

Jenny hesitates on the doorstep, a thousand uncertainties layering themselves inside of her like bricks. But some determination beyond her fathoming drives her to knock twice upon the door and wait, breathless, in the early morning chill. She finds herself half-hoping that it will be a stranger who answers, one to whom she can awkwardly apologize before withdrawing back to Wesley and Faith’s and then to Pennsylvania, where she can put this whole visit behind her. She is already preparing to explain her mistake when the door opens.

It is not a stranger. It is him.

They simply stare at each other for a moment. Rupert has gone grey too, she sees. But his eyes are clear, and his gaze just as steady. It seems utterly impossible that he stands here in front of her, near enough to touch. It is the closest they have been to each other in five years.

Once her eyes have drunk their fill of him, she merely waits to see how he will react. She did not think this far ahead when she knocked, and terrible possibilities cross her mind. He will tell her to leave, surely. Or else he will scream and curse at her right here on the doorstep. Perhaps he will even slam the door in her face.

Instead, something — something like warmth, something like gratitude — softens his eyes. Wordlessly, he steps back and opens the door wide, inviting her home.

 


	17. Epilogue (1789)

The American Experiment goes on.

It’s why he stayed, Rupert tells her. He always knew that the Americans were basing their country on some remarkable and admirable ideals. When everything was set in motion, he decided that he would simply stay and see how it all turned out.

(“Of course,” he confesses one day, years after she has returned, “I also stayed because I was waiting for you. It was ridiculous. Illogical. But I suppose I always knew — always hoped — that you would come back.”)

They have forgiven each other. It took years that felt like lifetimes. 

(He hated himself for the blind and blundering devotion that condemned her. She was crushed by the guilt of every betrayal. They both made mistakes. They both suffered terrible consequences. At the end of it all, they learned to live through the aftermath together.)

She does not dwell with secrets anymore.

(It was strange, reconciling what their worlds had become. Strange, but not difficult. They both saw so much death. Knew so much grief. When words could not fill the void, sorrow was the language that allowed them to hold each other and understand.)

Nothing is exactly as it was before the war. Nor could it be.

(“I love you,” she tells him, and again it is the truth. That is enough.)

They sit in chairs around the fire. They do not share old stories, but they read new ones. This weekend, they will travel to Philadelphia to visit Willow and Tara. The two of them took in a war orphan shortly after Jenny left, and they dote upon her ceaselessly. Dawn is clever and eager, and reminds Jenny, in the most bittersweet way, of Buffy.

Revolution has come and gone, and they will see what it brings to the rest of the world.

It has taken so much from them — but in the end, it has given them this. 

**Author's Note:**

> Huge huge thanks to enigmaticagentscully/alice for giving me the idea (via some fucking incredible fanart) and permission to use it.


End file.
